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Is anyone else kind of dissapointed with cairne bloodhoof? Sure it's a 4/5 that spawns a 4/5, but most of the time versus aggro they can just ignore it
Edit : Thinking about it, it's really decent against priests. usually you have to play around their mind controls and thoughtsteals, on a turn 6 a 4/5 double yeti is huge versus priest.
I don't have him so I always run a Sunwalker as a replacement. Seems to work better most of the time actually.
Pretty big update tonight my fellow Paladins!
Koyuki's Paladin Contol deck revised by Zilea
This is the deck that Zilea used to hit Legendary with on 04/21/2014! I also hit Legendary with it about 13-15 hours afterwards on the same day, which is today btw ; ] (the day I'm posting this at least). Zilea hit Legend in the morning, of which I watched most of. I ended up going to sleep before he hit legend and grinded out the last bit I needed that afternoon (from Rank 2). Zilea started off that night at Rank 2 as well if I'm not mistaken, but got that far with his own version of Paladin control.
This deck is very strong against the current meta and is basically an "Outlast" or "Healadin" deck. With there being so many high speed and high damage output decks in the current environment, those 2 Holy Light's can be pretty huge when played correctly. Outside of the crazy amount of heals, it also has a very strong presence in the mid-game featuring cards like Cairne Bloodhoof, Sylvanas Windrunner, and The Black Knight. The late game cards may seem a bit lacking for a Control deck, but with all the Miracle Rogues, UTH Hunters, Burn Mages, Zoolocks, and now even Weapon Aggro Warriors, your number one concern is just MAKING it to late game. At which point, your super powerful 6-drops and Tirion should be able to clean up the mess.
I'm sure everyone can see the strong similarities in this deck and Koyuki's. And that's because it is literally his deck with about 3 cards changed out (an extra Holy Light for Mind Control Tech, Spellbreaker for Harrison Jones, and Sunwalker for the Azure Drake). Zilea even had it listed as "Koyuki's" deck in his deck roster section and just made some revisions here and there throughout the night (or so it appeared from what I observed). I'm pretty fond of these revisions might I add; many times I found the MCT a bit too situational, Harrison fell off a bit with Control Warrior nearly disappearing, and the Drake was just a card that Koyuki was experimenting with in the place of the Sunwalker for I don't know how long (he originally had a Sunwalker in the deck).
Big props to Koyuki for laying out such a nice build for Paladin and big props to Zilea for taking it to the next level in his own way and achieving Legend!
***What's also nice to know, is this deck falls directly in line with the "Established Staples" section of our Thread. What does that mean? Well, what it means is that we finally have the base we've been fine tuning for the past 2-3 months struggling on the ladder as Paladin. Now we KNOW that Paladin can make it to Legend. I don't know if Paladin is a top-tier Class yet, only Tournaments will tell, but we are looking pretty solid for the time being.
I'm going to take this section of the post to talk about how I moved up the ladder. Also, I wanted to mention really quick, that I think all decks are capable of winning at any Rank, but playing the same exact deck, day after day.. all that grinding can get you worn out. A small change in play-style can be nice from time to time:
One last thing that I want to add to this reply is the budget control deck that I have been using on an Alternate account:
Budget Humiliation Control Deck
This deck is very budget and from my testing, very efficient. I was able to grind from Rank 20 to Rank 8 in about 4 and 1/2 hours (I had a few 5+ game win streaks along the way). I have no doubt you could go further with it, but its a nice deck for people to use if they don't have all that many cards yet (especially all the Legendaries required to make some of these decks).
Keep your faith in the Light!
Hi,
First of all Thanks for the guide and Gz on getting into Legend!
After seeing the success of watcher druids lately vs all this agro, I started integrating them into my deck. I don't see any High level players do it and I was wondering what is your opinion on the cons of using watchers (with sunfury protectors / silence) as a control paladin...
Rank 10 and rising if it matters :)
Watcher Paladin seems to be more mid-range control. I've played it and it can be brutal.
The problem I always have with Watcher Paladin is Paladin in general is such a combo oriented class to begin with that adding yet another combo into the deck to stop aggression when you already have multiple ways of board clear seems counter productive.
Keep in mind that Watcher Combo really needs 8 cards dedicated to it. 2 Watchers, 2 Iron Beaks, 2 Sunfurys, and 2 Defenders.
@Douillos Np and Thank you! : ]
As far as Watcher Paladin goes, I think what it boils down to is the fact that we as Paladin don't have any way of getting that extra value out of Watcher. What I mean by that is, we don't have Shadowflame like Warlock does to clear the board or even Keeper of the Grove like Druid has (ultimately, those two classes are all that even use Watcher).
I'm not saying it can't be done, and I believe some Paladin decks use to run Watcher in a type of Giant Control variant since they already ran all the Taunt-givers to begin with. However, like what mr_hosed was saying, we would have to do a lot of arranging in our base deck to fit in a 6-8 card combo.
Keep us updated on your progress with the deck, just as with anything that people are trying with Paladin, if its working I want to know about it ; ]
Thanks for putting this together great job!
Sticking to 2-4 above especially almost guarantees a win against Hunter. That is one real upside with Pally, they can chew up a Hunter better than any other class. I always run 2xAvenging Wrath and try make sure as much of the damage as possible goes to the face (either by playing on a clear board or combo with Equality).
A very good review thank you, makes me want to share my thoughts on paladins (Pally is not my main class but I do like playing it from time to time so my opinion could be incomplete or wrong)
First of all the deck that I use
Cards that I run and reason:
Redemption: I know koyukio said that this card is bad(or every paladin secret is bad) now, but I disagree. This card is a combo card by nature and thus the effectiveness of it relies on other cards and given the right deck (a deck that runs a lot of death rattle and divine shield creatures) it can be very strong.
Loot Hoarder: two of the problems of Paladin in my opinion are the lack of card cycling ability and the lack of good early game play. So this card is the perfect answer. It has good synergy with Redemption and Equality and it's a 2-drop which I think makes it superior than Hammer of Wrath and Azure Drake for the curve.
Stampeding Kodo: It is a common choice for paladin already but I just want to emphasize that in the current meta (Hunter and Zoo dominant) there is no reason not to run 2 of this card for midrange or control paladin just because it's such a good counter card.
Cards that I don't run and reason:
Avenging Wrath: It isn't bad at all, but for a 6-drop, I feel it doesn't do enough for control paladin. This card is mainly used as a board clear spell just like an AOE spell (I know it's not all it does but 90% of the time it's used like an AOE), but if you think of it as an AOE spell, it's too slow, too random and simply doesn't do enough damage to justify the cost (considering the damage also goes to heroes).
Guardian of Kings: I don't run any Holy Light. But even if I do, I would say that a second Holy Light is still better than this card. The creature this card provides is fine against other control decks but bad against beatdown decks which is the main reason to use healing cards in the first place. Usually at turn 7 or 8, spending 5 mana for a 5/6 creature on the board is just too slow against aggro. In stead you want to be able to cast Holy Light for 2 mana and use the rest of the mana for a taunt or removal.
Very cool looking deck gishop, and I agree with you completely, I think that Noble Sacrifice and Redemption are still pretty good Secrets for Paladin in the right deck (and of course in the right hands). One card that I would recommend trying to fit in the deck if possible, would be Harvest Golem. The Golem can get a lot of value out of Redemption and is also just an amazing 3-drop. If you can't fit him in I understand, but I figured I'd at least try and help out where I could. Keep us updated on the decks progress!
I'll also use this Reply as a quick update on some more exciting news, we have another deck to add to the list of Legendary Paladin decks:
Tsaf's Anti-Meta MidRange Paladin Deck:
Big congrats to Tsaf for hitting Legend and using his own Pally deck to do it! Now I'm sure most people already know what my favorite feature about this deck is right off the bat. Yep, you guessed it, Acolyte of Pain. Anyone who has already read my Paladin Deck Guide knows that I sincerely believe AoP is such a great card for us. In fact, its anathema to me why no one uses him. Anyone who watches me stream would also know that I did take a short break of using him when trying out a bunch of different Paladin decks. The sole reason for this, is because I wanted to stay true to the original deck that people were using and give it a full chance for what it was. If I were to revise any of those decks, I'm pretty sure the very first thing that I do, would be to add 1-2 Acolytes.
Other than that, this is a great looking and very straight forward Paladin MidRange deck.
"We will fight with Honor!"
That must have taken a day to write. Good job and thank you :)
Thank you for taking the time and writing this up. The Paladin class is so rewarding to play. Hopefully this post encourages others to try it out.
I enjoy paladin the most, such humility
Thanks to the both of you! So I've tried to play around with the watchers, and I can't really get them to work... Even though they can be life savers from time to time, I just can't enough value out of them... And they really make my mana curve ugly (so many 2's!)...
So I'm trying the Koyuki modified by Zilea deck, the thing is I don't have either TBK or SYlvanas... So I put in Rag + faceless instead! What do you think of this?
I'll come and update once I get a hang of the deck!
I think the main problem with Redemption is that it only goes off if your minion is killed by your opponent... You can't suicide a minion to get secret + deathrattle, or a divine shield... It's pretty easy to just play around it to be honest!
edit: Btw, you should really play tirion if you use redemption, It's sooooo sick getting tirion back + the weapon, people often just leave :D
Having read through and monitored this post for a while, and having thought about some things - some comments. Now, who am I to comment? Rank 10 nonlegendary - so you'll have to take my arguments on their own merits, or lack thereof, if you will. You could just say nonlegendary players aren't qualified to comment; I've seen that sort of thought go around in some circles. But isn't community discussion of Paladin best served if players learn to *improve* their play? And even if some players are uninformed about Paladin, shouldn't their speculative concerns and questions be addressed respectfully, again, in the interests of promoting constructive discussion? Of course, the thread is intended to help paladins of whatever sort as I take from the opening lines of the post, but I'll point out that in later posts in the thread, a certain poster may not have felt his opinion was welcome (granted it could perhaps have been better worded, but even less considerate and less graced paladins will have their opinions, yes?)
On to comments -
Although I understand making posts upbeat and simple, I think discussion would be better served by being more precise. This really isn't "A Critical Analysis of Paladin in Ranked" so much as it is a focus on legendary meta control Paladin for April 2014. That's a much narrower topic. For marketability and continuing discussion purposes, I can understand eliminating the date, but leaving out the deliberate bias towards particularly play styles of Paladin "they will not be a focus of mine in this current write-up" is something that should be addressed. Change the title, or the article, yes? Not an order as a moderator, mind, but you understand my reasons (which of course you may discount if you like - but if you should decide you would like to change the title in retrospect, I can accomplish that as a moderator, so just post in the thread or something.)
Second, there is little discussion of particular choices. For example, there is mention "I see Holy Light x 2 on EU", but no discussion of the meta and the particular reasons for those changes. I think it's Kolento's deck that runs Big Game Hunter, do you really think he's facing a lot of Hunter and Shaman matchups in his meta? Speaking from personal experience, I can say with confidence that meta not only is different from server to server, and from rank to rank, but even *from time to time* at the same rank on the same server. When I say there is little discussion, I mean - although there is generic recognition of card attributes, there is absence of specific recognition of meta shifts, and an absence of holistic thinking that will really allow players to improve their game. How does it help players to know that players on EU run double Holy Light at legendary rank, if they're rank 12 on NA? (I think it doesn't help much, you see? Not to be critical, mind; one can't serve every interest and address every concern, but you understand what I mean, what do players take away from knowing that? other than having some light conversation for parties, if you go to those sorts of parties.)
Although as I mentioned, I think the discussion would be better served by rather a LOT more details generally speaking, I will start off by asking a few specific questions.
1. Why double Wild Pyromancer in control Paladin? Is it simply because you want a utility drop for board clear combination with Equality? Note that most of the spells in those decks are high casting cost, so it's not for general purpose early board control; Consecration serves that purpose. Yet if it's not general purpose early board control, then it's conditional 1 global damage when combined with a spell plus board clear with Equality - is this a correct read on the situation? If that's not the case, then why two Pyromancer, and not one?
2. Why Big Game Hunter in control Paladin? Oh yes, technically all right, if you're facing a load of Warlock Giant, or Paladin Giant, or you want cheap removal alongside your Healing Touch to take you out of burst range, sure, technically, yes. But so many meta decks don't run minions with 7 attack or more (as opposed to say 2 weeks ago), I'm not sure I'd say BGH should be considered a "given" in decks.
3. Calling m1ssf0xyiio7 's deck definitional midrange. I'm not sure I would put it there. You don't have the life gain, but you have utility beats; there's more aggression with double Avenging Wrath - but what is it that makes this deck "midrange", exactly? There is this looseness of definitions which you see in a lot of posts, with people calling things control, or midrange, but *what does that mean exactly?* Like, Abver's double Molten Giant double Twilight Drake deck is listed under Control, but I'd say even BGH only makes that a midgame beats deck with control elements. Making a distinction between saying control decks tend to debuff and rush decks buff is well and good (and true), but there is a big grey area in there.
4. The Black Knight, Big Game Hunter listed as priority crafts; Sylvanas Windrunner mentioned as being the same as Faceless but more expensive.TBK and BGH are heavily meta-dependent; it looks like we're seeing some shift to druid taunts atm (and may more so after people look at Gaara's taunt-heavy druid from Romania Dreamhack) - but really, if you saw meta of utility beats early to midrange decks without taunts, TBK would be just a worse Chillwind Yeti. I don't think it's right to mention cards as being "priorities" - as much as people crave simplicity- without some mention of *why*.Sylvanas being a more expensive Faceless is just not right at all. Sylvanas is not there to copy off your enemy minion, hoping for a lucky Ragnaros shot or whatever, it's there to punish greed. Opponent has double Ancient of War taunted on the field? (Very possible with Druid running Faceless Manipulator). Faceless doesn't answer that problem, especially with Druid meta TBK (Druid just continues running you over), but Sylvanas *does*; the Druid can't suicide his/her own minions because their board is too strong - and if they flood the board for RNG, they can walk right into a Pyromancer/Equality. Faceless is generically useful - but Sylvanas does not have a substitute. It's a specific legend with a specific purpose, and there are no substitutes for it any more than there are for Alexstrasza or Ragnaros.
Again, keeping in mind that my opinion isn't really anything special, and due recognition given to the effort needed to create the article.
If you see a post that you find objectionable, report it, it helps keep the forum clean. But be aware people are allowed a lot of latitude.
If you find my posts to be rude, objectionable, or whatever, well, I got tired of writing polite TL; DR (Too Long, Didn't Read) posts at crybaby whiners. So now I just make it short and nasty.
If you find that funny, well and good. If you find that sad, that's even better.
i think coming into his thread and bashing all of his explanations is uncalled for behavior from a moderator.
Being a moderator doesn't stop me from having an opinion. Shocking, I know.
Furthermore, I take your characterization as negative, inaccurate, and not contributing to the discussion.
If you don't like the fact that I took the time to moderate one of your actions a short while ago, that's your right, but ad hominem attacks are not the way to go.
Cheers.
If you see a post that you find objectionable, report it, it helps keep the forum clean. But be aware people are allowed a lot of latitude.
If you find my posts to be rude, objectionable, or whatever, well, I got tired of writing polite TL; DR (Too Long, Didn't Read) posts at crybaby whiners. So now I just make it short and nasty.
If you find that funny, well and good. If you find that sad, that's even better.
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Innkeeper Beta TestNot that my opinion matters or anything, but I think your post was not bashing, but rather constructive criticism. I only wish I could generate that much from my threads/decks/posts.
*Tips hat*
Unless explicitly stated, my posts are my opinion and mine only.
Thank you for the reply AardvarkPepper, and just to start it off, EVERY rank is welcome to comment on this thread, I'd have it no other way. Just as you and I have already mentioned, that was my intention making this whole thing (and the reason that I would really like for it to be "Pinned" in the Paladin thread). I want this to be a resource for all Paladin players, new and old. I want anyone who wants to play Paladin to be able to use this thread and hopefully improve their game or help us improve ours.
The fact that you don't think this is a "Critical Analysis of Paladin in Ranked" is an interesting opinion. However, I feel that the title is extremely accurate. Just because I'm not placing a large focus on rush and midrange decks right now, shouldn't make the title misleading. Because in all reality, the last time I checked, "Paladin in Ranked" consists of about 75% Control decks and the 25% of what's left over is everything else combined (this is just again from my experience, and the 25% was generous). Therefore, I gave the same amount of space to my guide, respectfully. Don't forget, that while I did give something like 75% of this entire write-up to Control Paladin, I didn't leave out the other two deck archetypes at all. When the meta changes, I will update the Thread accordingly, just as I have updated when people tell me when they make it to Legend as Paladin with a new deck.
I'm going to go over your list now and answer it the best that I can. I want to go ahead and stress that you are very much correct in stating that there could be more detail, and it will come as soon as I have more time. I had every intention of my "Critical Analysis" to be twice as long, but I haven't gotten around to it just yet and I'd like for the update to be when things have taken a more severe shift.
1. Wild Pyromancer is an absolutely crucial piece to any Paladin Control deck. First of all, when combined with Equality, he becomes the absolute strongest sweeper in the game outside of Twisting Nether (which is double the cost and in an entirely different class). Second, like you mentioned, he combo's very well with other cards, even when used with Consecration he brings you in range of creatures like Earthen Ring Farseer, Voidwalker, SI:7 Agent, etc.. One of my personal favorite combo's with him, is actually with Hammer of Wrath for a pseudo-Swipe that also draws a card. Lastly, if you are only running one, you can't really rely on drawing it early enough to sweep the board for the first time against rush deck. If you want to try running only one of him, by all means, be our guest. But what you have to remember, is that given Paladin's defensive based cards, momentum is not our strong suit right now. It makes us rely more heavily on board clears, heals, and a really powerful late game.
2. BGH is definitely a meta card, that's obvious, but at the time of me writing this, it was a meta card choice of almost every single person that I had come across. In fact, I still use it in my Control deck today as do most. While Ragnaros the Firelord and Alexstrasza can pop up on occasion in literally any deck, most decks will always have a 7+ Attack Minion to target at some point in the game. For example, Hunters are even hitting 7+ Attack with their Savannah Highmane's + Houndmaster's or Timber Wolf (just like the one in the Dreamhack deck you mentioned by Gaara, which I did watch). I'll try and make it more clear next time I update this Thread that he is a meta card and can be replaced with whatever card floats your boat really. At the end of the day though, he's still a 3 mana 4/2 at the least which is fine against matchups that don't run creatures big enough for him to worry about.
3. I'll go into a little detail for you here, but this is just general CCG/TCG knowledge (I'm working on an article for this exact concept that goes into full detail and has a focus on Hearthstone).
As a general rule, these decks all act like Rock Paper Scissors, but not as a Rock automatically beats Scissors, but rather, Rock has a favorable matchup against Scissors, and so on. Yes there can be grey area's, but this at least gives an idea of what people are talking about and how they try and classify their decks, for those who may not understand already. These are very broad definitions meant to stretch across all card games. In fact, I would go as far as to say that the designers of card games take this into consideration when building the game to keep it balanced and dynamic at the same time. One last thing on this topic, as I already mentioned, I will try and find time to write up an article soon that focuses more precisely on Hearthstone's "Rock Paper Scissors" breakdown.
4. What you have done here is completely misquoted me and taken my original quote completely out of context:
"8. Faceless Manipulator - Very universal application, but not in most Paladin decks right now.
9. Sylvanas Windrunner - Same idea as Faceless, but more expensive in every way."
I don't see how this could be confusing, Sylvanas is just the same idea as Faceless when it comes to being Universal application and is not in most Paladin decks right now.
Hope this cleared some things up for you.
Hey Leaja, what are you current opinions on Ysera atm? I found that Ragnaros is pretty terrible atm, since he can be countered by rush decks flooding the board. At the same time though I see a huge issue with the paladin list you posted (Zilea) being that Tirion will almost always be silenced. In your deck the only prime targets are: Sylvanas, Tirion, Cairne, and Sunwalker. I find Sylvanas dies to well executed board wipes (They send all their creatures at her so she has no target). Now, I could be misplaying her, but either way if they silence Tirion she isn't exactly a great follow up as she is mediocre in stats for a late game drop (5/5 is solid, but it isn't guaranteed to stick).
Ysera, however, provides with a GREAT card draw engine, a problem that most paladins have. Literally everything Ysera gives us is a godsend. More sweepers in Awakening, Dream can be used as a free Brewmaster and between Kodo, Peacekeeper, BGH, etc. we can get plenty of value, plus you can always heal a minion or refresh a sunwalker. Emerald Drake gives us a huge fatty that can then be defender'd or just pressure the opponent, especially since it can come down after a Equality + Conc. Nightmare acts as removal on our tokens or just reach and Laughing Sister is just solid, but not amazing. Ysera also dodges all priest removal (Been seeing a few around Rank 5), has a huge butt so she can be used to pick off minions while refilling our hands, and is extremely problematic for other classes to kill. She can eat a silence and just keep on trucking or get poly'd for Tirion while giving us a card.
These are just my opinions obviously, and I'm only around Rank 5 so I'm nothing special but I have had great success with her. Also, we could run Alchemist as a surprise 12 damage burst from her, although it's pretty much a gimmick. Regardless, thanks for the post it's helped me tons in ranked so far, maybe I can hit legend tonight :)