Hearthpwn

Hey,

Just wondering how the new season is going for you. I gotta be honest, I find it really tough lately... The Zilea deck which got me to rank 10 (almost 9) at the end of last season, just seems to not be working well against All the aggro mage, tempo & miracle rogues, etc. I actually am happy when i get a hunt or warlock 'cause it doesn't feel as helpless...

Maybe I'm just having the worst draws and RNG luck of my life, but I'm seriously thinking of stopping control all together and join the train of brainless zoolocking...

EDIT: FYI I'm trying out the M1SS Midrange deck now ^^

@Douillos

Hey man, yah, I will say that in general the first week or two of the new season is extremely difficult. It's difficult for a number of reasons:

1. People are trying completely new decks. That can be a good thing and a bad thing, but for a Meta-Control Paladin deck, it is usually a very bad thing. We have answers in our deck to very specific cards/situations and we only really know what to expect from certain decks. When we don't go against those decks it can be super difficult for us to adjust on the fly like that. And quite frankly, the deck that we play against may be a hard counter to what we are playing, so no matter how good we do, its just not going to happen for us that game.

2. The competition is fierce. People are, as you already know, super cut-throat right now trying to get to the top/Legend. So people are going to be making some extremely bold and what I would consider high-risk / high-reward plays. Plays that I would never suggest someone make at a higher level, but sometimes those plays really pay off. When plays like that actually pay off for our opponent, we understand how fortunate the person was that we didn't draw that one part of a combo/etc.. that would have otherwise given us the game in the bag very quickly. That can really demoralize you and effect your next game believe it or not.

3. People are figuring out how to play against Paladin. This is the worst part. Paladin did pretty solid the first season, despite what any "meta report" has said, we did absolutely fine. We were beating top-level decks very consistently and were overall, just an easy 50/50 matchup against anything else (which allowed us to out-play our opponents). People didn't really know what to do against us for a while and we were able to soak up so much damage, that we would sometimes outlast decks that thought they could just burst us down (when, if they had played smarter they may have actually been able to beat us later in the game had they conserved the burst). So, overall, I think we've been figured out.

I feel the best thing we can do right now is make some minor adjustments to our decks and be patient. The first thing that I would do is gear my deck a little bit more towards Midrange (sorry Control players! you don't have to do this, but until we figure some things out, it might be the best move). Develop a really nice curve for your deck and maybe even add some 1-2 drop minions. This will let you gain some additional tempo early on and hopefully prevent some early damage before you have to waste an invaluable heal for later in the game. As for Miracle and Tempo Rogue, I feel like I've had a 50/50 matchup against them so far, where if I had just gotten some better momentum earlier in the game, I would have been completely fine (that goes for the Miracle matchup as well). Against Tempo Rogue, if you can match their tempo or keep them from doing to much damage early, we can out-last them and get board control later. Against Miracle Rogue, if we can get some early pressure on them while remaining above 20 health, we can actually bully that matchup as well. So overall, I think it would be wise for us to somehow incorporate some Harvest Golem's, Argent Squire's, Chillwind Yeti's, and maybe even an additional Hammer of Wrath (to battle their Agents and Farseers).

I've been running into roughly the same problems as you I'm sure, but my biggest problem is lately I've been getting burned out on Control haha. I made it from level 16 to level 11 pretty soundly as control and then fell back to level 12 and got a bit fed up with Control for a bit, so I went to an Aggro deck to blow off some steam. I didn't move at all with the aggro deck, but it was nice to be able to just go herp-derp attack for once.

Hope this helped! : ]

Hey there :)

Thanks for your fast response! It actually really helped, I really feel that I went through the same phases :)

As said in my edit, I'm running the M1SS midrange you listed in your OP, and seems a lot more appropriate for this beginning-of-season-meta...And I must say the most frustrating matchup for me is miracle rogue, so midrange definitily feels more adapted to fight them ^^

Well nice to hear from you, I'll come back and post my rank & some feedback in a few days of grinding :)

Good luck!

Give some time to the ladder, and play something non-control until you rank up to 5+. When the games become more control-ly, the Paladin control will shine. Right now, trying to climb with Paladin control is counter productive because its worst matchups are the most popular matchups (Hunter, Zoo and Miracle). 

I always wait almost 10 days for the ladder to settle down, because at the beginning of the season, everybody swarms the ranked matchups with the 'popular decks' so you are facing very fast decks while you are playing a very difficult control...which is not good. 

On the other hand, Paladin control is an AMAZING tournament deck, since it's a direct counter to most control decks, as it can outlast them and clear their boards multiple times no matter what. 

LeajaWijac can you post your current most updated deck? I am looking for a control or mid-range Pally deck to work with that is competitive against the current meta.