I don't actually like the zoo, aggro or murloc (what ever you wanna call it) versions of paladin, it was so much fun when first Ungoro came and Control Paladin was somewhat viable. Now it s just murlocs and there is some off meta Hand-Buff Keleseth Paladins and i think with KaC, this won't change. But i still have a little bit faith in something like anti-aggro healadin (with blackguards, Rag and the new 3 mana card as well), this kinda combo may be fun.
Edit: Problem is, so far I can't see anything that counters that stupid-ass machinegun priest. And with Duskbreaker (they just put OP dragons instead of draw cards, duh) and Psychic Scream, we are going to need all of them.
P.D.: Paladin Legendary is awkward, but will probably be good, the best thing she has so far is getting Spikeridged Steed will earn her far more value than usual in such paladin minions, and not only resists, but also can even benefit from Psychic Scream. However, we are going to need more to have a real chance against those buggers.
At present i'm not a huge fan of what i've seen. It seems they are pushing for a buffadin or silver hand recruit deck both of which are pretty combo oriented and with paladins pretty sorry draw options i'm not overly hopeful.
Sure the Legendary will probably be a solid playable card but i really don't like the idea of building the deck around it (take the quest as an example). Playing buff cards is usually inferior to playing a good minion of the same cost (with spikeridge steed as the exception). I really think paladin has struggled for a long time to find its identity and the recent cards released havn't clarified how a paladin is supposed to play. If they are going in the direction of a swarming deck with silver hand recruits i can't see it being remotely competitive with soooo much AOE flying around these days.
I think Paladin has a lot of strong cards but not synergistic ones so i'm hoping over the next few expansions Blizzard gives Pally a clearer identity while not shoving the idea of ''hey we printed silver hand recruit buff cards so chuck a heap of silver hand recruit stuff in your deck''.
Over its history Paladin has had very few competitve decks let alone a diversity to them, Murloc paladin is the only strong deck i can think of in recent history (there may be more) and that comes down to the synergy of murlocs and the printing of one insanely strong card ''anyfin can happen'' and the more recent murloc pally with bonemare etc.
I'll still be maining Pally for the life of hearthstone as i have so much time invested into owning all its legends etc but i really hope Blizzard is trying to give it an identity with clear goals and non gimmicky win conditions ie uther of the ebon blade exodia.
Heavily agree with Ragnarok231 that the healing aspect just isn't good enough but with enough syergies it may be a cool concept.
Still love Pally and am hanging out to see what epics are coming our way with the new exp.
I mean I'm just glad that viable decks might be forming that isn't just going face with murlocs. I personally hope they give more control paladin support, which they might, but my main thing I want is dragon paladin and n'zoth paladin support
"I have seen worlds bathed in the Makers' flames, their denizens fading without as much as a whimper. Entire planetary systems born and razed in the time that it takes your mortal hearts to beat once. Yet all throughout, my own heart devoid of emotion... of empathy. I. Have. Felt. Nothing. A million-million lives wasted. Had they all held within them your tenacity? Had they all loved life as you do?"
In wild the recruit swarm deck is actually like near top tier, it's tier 1. But without quartermaster and muster, I have no idea how it could be viable in standard
"I have seen worlds bathed in the Makers' flames, their denizens fading without as much as a whimper. Entire planetary systems born and razed in the time that it takes your mortal hearts to beat once. Yet all throughout, my own heart devoid of emotion... of empathy. I. Have. Felt. Nothing. A million-million lives wasted. Had they all held within them your tenacity? Had they all loved life as you do?"
As we all know, paladin is a class which plays fo values and having wins by outvaluing the opponent, beating them to death. But the recent expansion like koft&CAK literally lost their direction. The minions are overcosted comparing to its stacks and board effect.
Also, this class is lacking a good aoe without combo involved. While other class of control archetype like preist,warlock receives a powerful board clear and removals in the coming expansion, paladin are just receiving more dudes. That’s not how board control heavied class work, creating more minions doesn’t affect the board much.
I main paladin since closed beta. Right now, it´s my most playe class with over 2.8k wins.
My most beloved meta was GvG with the token synergy cards. After that, murloc combo paladin was very fun to play too. Right now, i don´t like at all the "new strategies". Quest paladin was a total failure because galvador was not good enought to be used as an win condition and paladin have just a bunch of very weak buffs, being kings just okay, and steed strong, but already too late to make galvador make a difference in the match.
With paladin in a weak state (just midrange murlocs being somewhat relevant) and seing they using the legendary slot to push some kind of "improving" of the quest strategy (somewhat because the legendary will mot help to proc the quest ticks, it will just benefit from playing buffs in the deck) it make me really sad. Unless they realese a new good early buff (like priest had the +2+4 with spell power, this card ir pretty much unplayable (1 steed is not good enought to make it good, and a 7 mana 1/1 will be a brick in your hand way more often then a power play in the board)
Regarding the token synergy cards realead, at first i didn´t like it, since paladin lacks a lot of draw / early synergy cards. Now i have to think better. The kobold card is not good enought, s ince we just have stegodon and tarim as good silevr hand buffs (steward is okay, but paladin doen´s have a good 1 / 2 drops to suporte a vanilla 3/3 on curve). Level up is just terrible. Just compare it with quartermaster (back in the time, they was not good enouht to be 2 copies on the deck). But now with Call for arms (strongest paladin card from the set) we maybe can make it work, since will be a loot easier to setup some strategies.
My last hope is the weapon being a good standalone card.
As well as the win condition for pally,another late game decks have their own way to win like exodia mage, jade druid. Pally are just going for the face in the late game in order to win
Yeah in wild it works and i think it fits the idea of Paladin as well. Leading your troops into battle and buffing them etc.
Perhaps thats what blizzard are trying to capture moving forward and who knows it may be viable with the new weapon and kobold who adds recruits to your hand combined with level up and light fused stegadon.
Having said that all your noble recruits die to a lot of AOE non combo cards even when buffed by Tarim or level up which takes a combo to set up.
Praying for some game changing epics but not holding my breath for the silver hand recruit idea.
Obviously also Pally main 8 k wins.So far with the new Legendary and Call to Arms ..... , honestly to me it seems Paladin is all over the place( sry if that’s not the correct term) .
We have the Jailor who is good with Handbuff,Level up, Mountain Giants?
We gottn a healing Elemental who is good with the new 2 mana spellstone but what elemental synergy?( + healing seems less and less relevant)
We have a Weapon who is good for guys with a good connection to RNGsus?
Then there is a Legendary who is good with buffspelles?( although one spikeridged steed is already quite decent)
And last but surely not least Call to Arms ,wich is good in a aggressive / tempo oriented deck? ( I doubt this goes in a deck with Doomsayers, but Dirty Rats I can see for sure. )
as a person who's new to Paladin (just 100ish wins in Ranked since I joined the game during Naxx release) and with a desire to turn each class golden (5 out of 4 so far) I'm struggling to find the willpower to play Paladin as is right now. the viable Standard decks Pally has are snowbally, rushy, just disgusting strategies that win fast on curve or not at all ; Pirates, Murlocs and some shabby Keleseth variants differ very little except in the fact how badly can the opponent counter you. the cards it uses are boring and offer little variety per game, quickly turning it into a chore to play. the winrates are there, but there's just no character to it at all, no satisfaction or flavor. you're just doing what every other brain-on-vacation player is doing, and it is numbing and just looking at each card in the deck is the reason why. aside from that, Paladin has always been 'plagued' by running Tirion in almost every version and just generally getting legendaries that weren't competitive enough or interesting enough to play. Ragnaros Lightlord, seriously? could it have been more boring? Blackguard is a fantastic concept, but of course it costs too much mana. gotta print more 2 cost snowball murlocs, eh?
when I saw Uther of the Ebon Blade, I decided it was time to do Paladin off my list (and it's the first card to excite me in Paladin at all!) and it is on my backburner till we see some cards that support it or at least give you some sort of fighting chance against other Control decks.
so in short, Blizzard has no idea what to do with Hunter, Rogue, Shaman and Paladin, and it's still fumbling.
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''He traded sands for skins, skins for gold, gold for life. In the end, he traded life for sand.''
I liked old fashion control pally, but since blizz went out their way and made fatigue immunity (jade cancer), exodia mage and new control warrior. Warrior used to be pretty even match up with calculated removals, now he can go sulfuras and destroy all threats with hero power or dead mans hand and do infinite executes/brawls.
Another Paladin main here. I got 2300 wins in a year so far. 2k of them are with control paladin which lead me to legend in the Un'Goro meta. Unfortunately with the Oppression of Razapriest control paladin has fallen into the dumpster, to t4 and is not viable any more. I always hated the murloc version and didn't want to play it. I've been struggling in this meta with Control paladin to reach Rank 5 and that was it. Atm I am trying with Brian Kibler's legend no murloc, midrange deck which is pretty good I have to say.
So I was hoping thtt we would get some cards that are going to give a lift off to this archetype. So what did we get?
Level Up! A nice addition to the dude paladin archetype. A worse Quartermaster, that might be a slight boost to the archetype. But as I've said, this deck needs a decent dude generator.
Benevolent Djinn. A card that I am not sure if it's good for control healadin. Do we need more heal? After the rotation where we lose our big guns, yes. Atm I am not sure. And not only that. The 3 mana spot in control paladin is crowded so far. But this might work out in a Blackguard deck along with our new spellstone.
Leser Pearl Spellstone. A great card. I love it. Some say it's bad, but it's not. With Wickerflame Burnbristle and Truesilver Champion it can be a 2 mana 6/6 already on T4 and T5. This works great in the control healadin they are trying to push, and I really really hope that our weapon is the broken card that will push this archetype. But the problem is, can allthis healing compete with Priests? If i'ts broken it might. If it increases our overall health it might yes. Our hopes lie on our weapon.
Unidentified Maul. A pretty good weapon. Can be used as a one of in any midrange swarmy/token deck. We will see what other cards we get.
Call to Arms. A very very good card, that can give boost to murloc decks, and depending on what early game we get either in the class or in neutral it can boost some other archetypes. This will deffinitely see play.
Lynessa Sunsorrow. At first I was like, oh this is just shit. But then I thought. How many times did my buffed minions got silecned? Did silence make Spikeridged Steed suck? Did it make Tirion Fordring Suck? So many times my only play was to buff a single dude just to play it. This will see play, and I hope we get a broken buff so it will work with the minion. And with just Blessing of Kings and Spikeridged Steed in a deck with the right minions, this will be a huge threat.
So our hopes lie to the 3 cards left. A good weapon to make Control paladin viable against Jades and mainly Raza priest.
A good buff to promote Lynessa, and I think they will do it. Remember that we always get card that promote a class legendary that has a new kind of ability.
And a good 2 drop. Hydrologist is not enough to make midrange paladin work. We got a pretty good 1 drop last expansion, now we deserve our Shielded minibot 2.0.
But even if we get what we want, we still have to deal with the 2 broken AOE, priests got, Cataclysm that warlocks got, and ofc we have to deal with the new early game warlocks got. Just watch what they got. Kobold librarian is maybe the best 1 drop ever printed, and their new taunt? Why not give paladins something like that? Why not give paladins another board clear, while we are still using the same combo piece from classic? Anyway. I hope we get what we deserve. and that's not the dumpster.
I was really disappointed on our first 3 cards, but the last ones we've got are not shit, but not broken like the ones Rogue, Warlock and Priest get. ATM I am really looking forward for Thursday when our weapon (Val'Anyr, Hammer of the Ancient Kings) will be revealed, and please make it broken.
Team 5's design of the classes don't mirror their identity in WoW. I mean, look at how priest in HS is doing the job of rogue in WoW (i.e. all of the theft abilities).
Did you see the new 1 and 2 drops for Warlocks yesterday? How the f=== do we compete with that?
Imagine your Warlock opponent drops 1/3 first turn, then the new 2/4 second turn. Both with taunt. And then on turn 3 he can give a demon+2/+2. I weep at the thought.
We are left praying the NEUTRAL cards not yet revealed will somehow elevate us over the top, or at least give us a decent beginning. I am not optimistic.
I think the best theme for paladin is buffing and divine shield, but buffing minions on board.
I believe that in order to make buffing feasible we need good buffs, strong early game cards, so we can hold the board control, or at least keep minions alive (sticky 2 drops) and more tempo cards.
And in order to make divine shield strong enough to justify a deck based on that, we would have to see cards with special abilities such as:
- at the start of your turn give your minions divine shield
- at the end of each turn gain divine shield
- if this minion survives damage, gain divine shield
In order words, we need to get tempo out of divine shield, at least over time (turns), in a way that a single "1 DMG to all enemy minions" won't destroy your tempo, since divine shield minions are usually overpriced.
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I don't actually like the zoo, aggro or murloc (what ever you wanna call it) versions of paladin, it was so much fun when first Ungoro came and Control Paladin was somewhat viable. Now it s just murlocs and there is some off meta Hand-Buff Keleseth Paladins and i think with KaC, this won't change. But i still have a little bit faith in something like anti-aggro healadin (with blackguards, Rag and the new 3 mana card as well), this kinda combo may be fun.
I like the Level Up! card. It reminds me on Quartermaster, and although it does'nt provide a 2/5 body, makes for a taunt wall, wich is nice.
It makes cards like Lost in the Jungle, Stand Against Darkness or Drygulch Jailor actually worth considering.
Edit: Problem is, so far I can't see anything that counters that stupid-ass machinegun priest. And with Duskbreaker (they just put OP dragons instead of draw cards, duh) and Psychic Scream, we are going to need all of them.
P.D.: Paladin Legendary is awkward, but will probably be good, the best thing she has so far is getting Spikeridged Steed will earn her far more value than usual in such paladin minions, and not only resists, but also can even benefit from Psychic Scream. However, we are going to need more to have a real chance against those buggers.
Click to see my Hearthstone projects:
Paladin main here
At present i'm not a huge fan of what i've seen. It seems they are pushing for a buffadin or silver hand recruit deck both of which are pretty combo oriented and with paladins pretty sorry draw options i'm not overly hopeful.
Sure the Legendary will probably be a solid playable card but i really don't like the idea of building the deck around it (take the quest as an example). Playing buff cards is usually inferior to playing a good minion of the same cost (with spikeridge steed as the exception). I really think paladin has struggled for a long time to find its identity and the recent cards released havn't clarified how a paladin is supposed to play. If they are going in the direction of a swarming deck with silver hand recruits i can't see it being remotely competitive with soooo much AOE flying around these days.
I think Paladin has a lot of strong cards but not synergistic ones so i'm hoping over the next few expansions Blizzard gives Pally a clearer identity while not shoving the idea of ''hey we printed silver hand recruit buff cards so chuck a heap of silver hand recruit stuff in your deck''.
Over its history Paladin has had very few competitve decks let alone a diversity to them, Murloc paladin is the only strong deck i can think of in recent history (there may be more) and that comes down to the synergy of murlocs and the printing of one insanely strong card ''anyfin can happen'' and the more recent murloc pally with bonemare etc.
I'll still be maining Pally for the life of hearthstone as i have so much time invested into owning all its legends etc but i really hope Blizzard is trying to give it an identity with clear goals and non gimmicky win conditions ie uther of the ebon blade exodia.
Heavily agree with Ragnarok231 that the healing aspect just isn't good enough but with enough syergies it may be a cool concept.
Still love Pally and am hanging out to see what epics are coming our way with the new exp.
I mean I'm just glad that viable decks might be forming that isn't just going face with murlocs. I personally hope they give more control paladin support, which they might, but my main thing I want is dragon paladin and n'zoth paladin support
In wild the recruit swarm deck is actually like near top tier, it's tier 1. But without quartermaster and muster, I have no idea how it could be viable in standard
As we all know, paladin is a class which plays fo values and having wins by outvaluing the opponent, beating them to death. But the recent expansion like koft&CAK literally lost their direction. The minions are overcosted comparing to its stacks and board effect.
Also, this class is lacking a good aoe without combo involved. While other class of control archetype like preist,warlock receives a powerful board clear and removals in the coming expansion, paladin are just receiving more dudes. That’s not how board control heavied class work, creating more minions doesn’t affect the board much.
I main paladin since closed beta. Right now, it´s my most playe class with over 2.8k wins.
My most beloved meta was GvG with the token synergy cards. After that, murloc combo paladin was very fun to play too. Right now, i don´t like at all the "new strategies". Quest paladin was a total failure because galvador was not good enought to be used as an win condition and paladin have just a bunch of very weak buffs, being kings just okay, and steed strong, but already too late to make galvador make a difference in the match.
With paladin in a weak state (just midrange murlocs being somewhat relevant) and seing they using the legendary slot to push some kind of "improving" of the quest strategy (somewhat because the legendary will mot help to proc the quest ticks, it will just benefit from playing buffs in the deck) it make me really sad. Unless they realese a new good early buff (like priest had the +2+4 with spell power, this card ir pretty much unplayable (1 steed is not good enought to make it good, and a 7 mana 1/1 will be a brick in your hand way more often then a power play in the board)
Regarding the token synergy cards realead, at first i didn´t like it, since paladin lacks a lot of draw / early synergy cards. Now i have to think better. The kobold card is not good enought, s ince we just have stegodon and tarim as good silevr hand buffs (steward is okay, but paladin doen´s have a good 1 / 2 drops to suporte a vanilla 3/3 on curve). Level up is just terrible. Just compare it with quartermaster (back in the time, they was not good enouht to be 2 copies on the deck). But now with Call for arms (strongest paladin card from the set) we maybe can make it work, since will be a loot easier to setup some strategies.
My last hope is the weapon being a good standalone card.
As well as the win condition for pally,another late game decks have their own way to win like exodia mage, jade druid. Pally are just going for the face in the late game in order to win
Yeah in wild it works and i think it fits the idea of Paladin as well. Leading your troops into battle and buffing them etc.
Perhaps thats what blizzard are trying to capture moving forward and who knows it may be viable with the new weapon and kobold who adds recruits to your hand combined with level up and light fused stegadon.
Having said that all your noble recruits die to a lot of AOE non combo cards even when buffed by Tarim or level up which takes a combo to set up.
Praying for some game changing epics but not holding my breath for the silver hand recruit idea.
Obviously also Pally main 8 k wins.So far with the new Legendary and Call to Arms ..... , honestly to me it seems Paladin is all over the place( sry if that’s not the correct term) .
We have the Jailor who is good with Handbuff,Level up, Mountain Giants?
We gottn a healing Elemental who is good with the new 2 mana spellstone but what elemental synergy?( + healing seems less and less relevant)
We have a Weapon who is good for guys with a good connection to RNGsus?
Then there is a Legendary who is good with buffspelles?( although one spikeridged steed is already quite decent)
And last but surely not least Call to Arms ,wich is good in a aggressive / tempo oriented deck? ( I doubt this goes in a deck with Doomsayers, but Dirty Rats I can see for sure. )
as a person who's new to Paladin (just 100ish wins in Ranked since I joined the game during Naxx release) and with a desire to turn each class golden (5 out of 4 so far) I'm struggling to find the willpower to play Paladin as is right now. the viable Standard decks Pally has are snowbally, rushy, just disgusting strategies that win fast on curve or not at all ; Pirates, Murlocs and some shabby Keleseth variants differ very little except in the fact how badly can the opponent counter you. the cards it uses are boring and offer little variety per game, quickly turning it into a chore to play. the winrates are there, but there's just no character to it at all, no satisfaction or flavor. you're just doing what every other brain-on-vacation player is doing, and it is numbing and just looking at each card in the deck is the reason why. aside from that, Paladin has always been 'plagued' by running Tirion in almost every version and just generally getting legendaries that weren't competitive enough or interesting enough to play. Ragnaros Lightlord, seriously? could it have been more boring? Blackguard is a fantastic concept, but of course it costs too much mana. gotta print more 2 cost snowball murlocs, eh?
when I saw Uther of the Ebon Blade, I decided it was time to do Paladin off my list (and it's the first card to excite me in Paladin at all!) and it is on my backburner till we see some cards that support it or at least give you some sort of fighting chance against other Control decks.
so in short, Blizzard has no idea what to do with Hunter, Rogue, Shaman and Paladin, and it's still fumbling.
''He traded sands for skins, skins for gold, gold for life. In the end, he traded life for sand.''
(.o.))~ ~(('o') (.o.))~
Man as a paladin main who has clocked in over 1000 wins i sadly agree to all of this lol
I liked old fashion control pally, but since blizz went out their way and made fatigue immunity (jade cancer), exodia mage and new control warrior. Warrior used to be pretty even match up with calculated removals, now he can go sulfuras and destroy all threats with hero power or dead mans hand and do infinite executes/brawls.
Piloted Shredder, Knife Juggler, Mad Scientist, Dr. Boom
Need to be removed from this game
Another Paladin main here. I got 2300 wins in a year so far. 2k of them are with control paladin which lead me to legend in the Un'Goro meta. Unfortunately with the Oppression of Razapriest control paladin has fallen into the dumpster, to t4 and is not viable any more. I always hated the murloc version and didn't want to play it. I've been struggling in this meta with Control paladin to reach Rank 5 and that was it. Atm I am trying with Brian Kibler's legend no murloc, midrange deck which is pretty good I have to say.
So I was hoping thtt we would get some cards that are going to give a lift off to this archetype. So what did we get?
Drygulch Jailor, a mediocre card that might not even be the card Dude Paladin ever needed. Dude paladin needs another Muster for Battle for it to be a meta deck. Another good dude generator to support Lost in the Jungle and Vinecleaver.
Level Up! A nice addition to the dude paladin archetype. A worse Quartermaster, that might be a slight boost to the archetype. But as I've said, this deck needs a decent dude generator.
Benevolent Djinn. A card that I am not sure if it's good for control healadin. Do we need more heal? After the rotation where we lose our big guns, yes. Atm I am not sure. And not only that. The 3 mana spot in control paladin is crowded so far. But this might work out in a Blackguard deck along with our new spellstone.
Leser Pearl Spellstone. A great card. I love it. Some say it's bad, but it's not. With Wickerflame Burnbristle and Truesilver Champion it can be a 2 mana 6/6 already on T4 and T5. This works great in the control healadin they are trying to push, and I really really hope that our weapon is the broken card that will push this archetype. But the problem is, can allthis healing compete with Priests? If i'ts broken it might. If it increases our overall health it might yes. Our hopes lie on our weapon.
Unidentified Maul. A pretty good weapon. Can be used as a one of in any midrange swarmy/token deck. We will see what other cards we get.
Call to Arms. A very very good card, that can give boost to murloc decks, and depending on what early game we get either in the class or in neutral it can boost some other archetypes. This will deffinitely see play.
Lynessa Sunsorrow. At first I was like, oh this is just shit. But then I thought. How many times did my buffed minions got silecned? Did silence make Spikeridged Steed suck? Did it make Tirion Fordring Suck? So many times my only play was to buff a single dude just to play it. This will see play, and I hope we get a broken buff so it will work with the minion. And with just Blessing of Kings and Spikeridged Steed in a deck with the right minions, this will be a huge threat.
So our hopes lie to the 3 cards left. A good weapon to make Control paladin viable against Jades and mainly Raza priest.
A good buff to promote Lynessa, and I think they will do it. Remember that we always get card that promote a class legendary that has a new kind of ability.
And a good 2 drop. Hydrologist is not enough to make midrange paladin work. We got a pretty good 1 drop last expansion, now we deserve our Shielded minibot 2.0.
But even if we get what we want, we still have to deal with the 2 broken AOE, priests got, Cataclysm that warlocks got, and ofc we have to deal with the new early game warlocks got. Just watch what they got. Kobold librarian is maybe the best 1 drop ever printed, and their new taunt? Why not give paladins something like that? Why not give paladins another board clear, while we are still using the same combo piece from classic? Anyway. I hope we get what we deserve. and that's not the dumpster.
I was really disappointed on our first 3 cards, but the last ones we've got are not shit, but not broken like the ones Rogue, Warlock and Priest get. ATM I am really looking forward for Thursday when our weapon (Val'Anyr, Hammer of the Ancient Kings) will be revealed, and please make it broken.
FOR THE HORDE!
I won't be satisfied until i see Dragonadin revamped.
The rest is good tho. Finally Dudes instead of Murlocs.
Team 5's design of the classes don't mirror their identity in WoW. I mean, look at how priest in HS is doing the job of rogue in WoW (i.e. all of the theft abilities).
Paladin's weapon is Val'Anyr?
If WoW taught me anything, it's definitively going to be a healadin tool.
Click to see my Hearthstone projects:
Two possible Pally legendary weapons that might kick butt:
"Your hero has taunt"
"If your hero is at full health, healing your hero increases maximum health" (i.e., can heal above 30 like armor)
Did you see the new 1 and 2 drops for Warlocks yesterday? How the f=== do we compete with that?
Imagine your Warlock opponent drops 1/3 first turn, then the new 2/4 second turn. Both with taunt. And then on turn 3 he can give a demon+2/+2. I weep at the thought.
We are left praying the NEUTRAL cards not yet revealed will somehow elevate us over the top, or at least give us a decent beginning. I am not optimistic.
I think the best theme for paladin is buffing and divine shield, but buffing minions on board.
I believe that in order to make buffing feasible we need good buffs, strong early game cards, so we can hold the board control, or at least keep minions alive (sticky 2 drops) and more tempo cards.
And in order to make divine shield strong enough to justify a deck based on that, we would have to see cards with special abilities such as:
- at the start of your turn give your minions divine shield
- at the end of each turn gain divine shield
- if this minion survives damage, gain divine shield
In order words, we need to get tempo out of divine shield, at least over time (turns), in a way that a single "1 DMG to all enemy minions" won't destroy your tempo, since divine shield minions are usually overpriced.