Hearthpwn

Intro:

As a veteran from before the public release, I believe that every deck can be playable, winnable, viable. Personally I believe no card is specifically bad seeing there is no card in this game that cannot help you win a game even by a little. Magma Rager may suck (right now), especially against mage but regardless of its horrible stats, it can kill an opponent and one day be "viable" or "meta fit" based on future cards released. Now don't get me wrong, I am not a anti net deck pleb; I have all the cards in the game on several accounts and have nothing against avoiding recreating the wheel. My problem is newer players in this game tend to lean towards decks straight from tempostorm ... from the original face hunter lists pre buzzard nerf to the first zoo lists it has always happened. My problem with using a list online as a new player is you get used to the "normal meta"... except here is the problem, there is no normal meta... In my opinion if you started 2 weeks earlier, disenchant EVERYTHING to make pirate warrior then you start running into people that play a deck specifically tech'd to beat your "aggressive" kind of deck... you get pissed at the original deck creator, comment on HearthPwn "this deck sucks" and disenchant the crap you just enchanted after two weeks of grinding to make another deck that will only continue your cycle of [Enchant-Disenchant so on].

Now if you don't mind dumping a load of money to reach legend a couple times, go ahead... but Do not complain to people who spend next to nothing, have a lot more cards and can "tech the meta" without halving to disenchant half their stuff because they took the time to be patient, not start out copying and pasting lists, not b*tching to others about deck concepts and such... the best hearthstone players aren't legend 5000 or rank 5. they usually start out reaching ranks of 17-10 at the end of the season, losing with their own decks or experiments and when they start learning what makes a good archtype counter, they reach top legend levels with Consistent effective decks that have "Techs" in them to win(not a copied list).

Point/Response to topic:

Unfortunately the evolution of hearthstone has completely transformed paladin. It isn't necessarily good or bad but its surely different. From the original midrange(pre nax) to shockadin to tempo paladin(secret) to anyfin etc... the whole game has gone from Yeti to Shredder to Mortal Strike or Reno.

Paladins main Aoe's have been Equality + Pyro, Equality + consecrate, truesilver, and effective health the regain board while tanking damage.

With decks faster than ever or decks with more tools to control the "old" paladin is just not effective enough to consistently dominate.

Is paladin still viable? can it win games? can it beat Reno/ pirate? Absolutely.

But when doing so, it loses consistency because the tools paladin has to utilize right now make it hard to be overall effective to more than just pirate or reno. 

With the lack of removal on sticky minions or decks that have burst and no board as their win condition paladin is very hard to use.

With the lack of Tempo minions other than challenger and tirion, Paladin vs Renolock is uneven. 

and not to mention the healing is usually not "universal" enough to handle different decks(yes 2 forbidden healing can easily beat an aggro deck, considering you queue into pirate warrior, draw them, and have the health by turn 5 to use it for 10 health)

also burst is low compared to paladin archtypes.

Conclusion/ Future of Paladin:

There is no 100% way to be certain; these are estimated assumptions.

With the reality paladin is facing right now, it will continue to change and possibly a widely used class again. I expect to see token paladin in the future even after justicar and keeper rotates, probably a midrange list or a combo list but it will return. warlock in general used to struggle vs decks that flooded them with minions, minions and more minions and thats exactly what will return when reno rotates. 

and when flood decks return (bloodlust shaman, token druid gets used more, flood paladin) decks that had trouble dealing with sticky minions or tempo minions, midrange druid, midrange paladin, egg druid, will return with FULL strength. thats my prediction. but until that paladin is in a state where the mainstream decks right now make every consistent paladin archtype right now not effectively usable.

Enter the Coliseum isn't great but it was enough to see my dragon paladin to rank 5 - just didn't have the deck space for the pyro/equality/consecrate combos. Sometimes it works out better than brawl but you need some board presence first so you can trade off your smaller minions into his biggest then finish it off after with a truesilver hit or something.

As others have said, Paladin has powerful board clears but they are all 2-card combos.  It would be nice to have early game single target removal, but that would probably be OP given the heal and attack-neutralization cards they have (Aldor, etc.)

I think that Paladin is best built for midrangey decks, but they haven't had the tools since the Mysterious Challenger debacle.  Blizzard has been too afraid of handing them anything else good.  Hopefully this expansion plus the rotation changes that.

The real problem with control, is not board clear, is not early game removal and it's not card draw. The issue lies to the small window that Control Paladin has to end the game.