is it actually worth it to place a card in your deck that gives your card more "stamina" in a battle;
example:
is it worth removing one offensive spell in a druid deck to add it healing touch
or for paladin is guadian of kings' heal 6 health worth it to have (arguably) a lower quality 7 drop as compared to a stormwind champion or ravenhold assassin
and while were at it:
where do some of the armor cards fit into this format of cost to actual game value ratio
is shield slam worthless? or mage secret ice barrier or the various armor gaining abilities of the druid?
I think there are places for these types of cards, and long as you aren't forced to lose tempo. Shield block, at least replaces itself with another card; giving it a bit more value then let's say, healing touch. But as I said, there are places for these cards, in my opinion.
As already mentioned, pure healing like Holy Light and Healing Touch generally does nothing but extending the game and make you lose tempo/momentum as you lost a card. If you still don't have anything else despite your heal to defend yourself with you will lose anyway. When the heal is tied to another external effect (Shield Block/Lay on Hands) or a creature (Guardian of Kings, Ancient of Lore) you still get something additional that still keeps your tempo where it is.
Pure healing is mostly useful to counter burn effects like Pyroblast or whenever you really live one more turn to preform something to follow up. I recently had a decent mage arena deck that had 3x Ice Barriers and 2x Ice Blocks where I simply extended the game with them and than procceded to 5 for 1 with Flamestrikes. Went 7/3 with it. Also, in the tournament at Blizzcon Reckful used a mage deck that took advantage of Ice Barriers and Ice Blocks together with other freeze effects to extend the game far enough to finish of the opponent with his Pyroblasts and other burn spells.
As already mentioned, pure healing like Holy Light and Healing Touch generally does nothing but extending the game and make you lose tempo/momentum as you lost a card. If you still don't have anything else despite your heal to defend yourself with you will lose anyway. When the heal is tied to another external effect (Shield Block/Lay on Hands) or a creature (Guardian of Kings, Ancient of Lore) you still get something additional that still keeps your tempo where it is.
Pure healing is mostly useful to counter burn effects like Pyroblast or whenever you really live one more turn to preform something to follow up. I recently had a decent mage arena deck that had 3x Ice Barriers and 2x Ice Blocks where I simply extended the game with them and than procceded to 5 for 1 with Flamestrikes. Went 7/3 with it. Also, in the tournament at Blizzcon Reckful used a mage deck that took advantage of Ice Barriers and Ice Blocks together with other freeze effects to extend the game far enough to finish of the opponent with his Pyroblasts and other burn spells.
Like others have said if the healing doesn't have a second beneficial effect it's not really worth having. Think of it as spending a turn and a card to give your opponent another turn since you wasted yours on healing.
I think Healing Touch is a great Druid card. It heals a ton of damage and doesn't cost your entire mana pool like Lay on Hands does. It is used against Hunters, Rogues, and Mages who try to burn you down as fast as they can. Healing back 8 health when you have low health in a top deck battle vs. these decks is huge since their hero power automatically does 1/2 damage each turn.
Hasn't been mentioned, but I love darkscale healer on a deck built for mid/late game with beefy minions. You take trades that would normally set you up to be WIPED by an AOE, but then darkscale just removes that threat.
As for healing touch, and other pure healing cards, I don't like them. They CAN save your ass and win against an aggro deck, but more often than not, I find they just take up a spot in your hand until you are forced to use it, and it only buys one more turn. If you take a card like that, the deck HAS to be built around it.
It was already said in this thread, if you have the draw to back it up, pure heals aren't bad. There's still a catch with those situations since their uses overlap pretty harsh. There's only two cards, essentially: Holy Light and Healing Touch. Holy Light is okay, but you might as well run Lay on Hands - in fact, you have to since it's the heavy draw you need unless you run some serious slowroll deck (which kinda suck these days). Healing Touch could work with more card draw of course, but only one of them and with a few beefier minions, it could steal you a couple of games.
The reason a singleton Holy Light or Healing Touch is good is because of the fact that you can drop it turns 5-7 along with a minion. This allows you to advance the board state while putting yourself out of reach of Pyroblasts and Leeroy Jenkins.
A card like Lay on Hands is only playable when the board is empty or favorable, which means you can't always cast it. You almost always find a time to play the cheap heals without giving up the board.
I'm quite glad this topic was bump, I've seen and tried Healing Touch to great success these days vs Mages and the majority of balls-to-the-wall burn decks.
The reason a singleton Holy Light or Healing Touch is good is because of the fact that you can drop it turns 5-7 along with a minion. This allows you to advance the board state while putting yourself out of reach of Pyroblasts and Leeroy Jenkins.
A card like Lay on Hands is only playable when the board is empty or favorable, which means you can't always cast it. You almost always find a time to play the cheap heals without giving up the board.
This. I am currently running a stall deck as a Paladin with great success. I have 2x Guardian of Kings, 1x Lay on Hands and 1x Holy Light. This way, I have a high chance of having a heal ready, whatever the stage of the game is (early, mid, late).
Pure healing is certainly a really good defense vs burn, but that is mostly due to the fact that burn is a burst threat compared to the constant threat of a creature. If you have taken, or are about to take a spell to the face, a heal negates that damage and the threat if no more. A creature will still remain on the field to attack you again next turn.
Pure healing ain't that bad as I originally thought but it mostly stands out due to the current popularity of burn. If the current meta shifts towards bigger creatures I figure it will be more important to get something on the board, either to stop it or refill the board after attacking it with your other minions, or using pure removal to get rid of it rather than healing the damage it did/would do.
You realize a sizable number of decklists that people used to reach legendary contained those cards, right? I would argue this makes them the opposite of terrible.
Healing Touch, Holy Light, etc are all awful. Do not play them. Lifegain as a bonus is fine (Lay on Hands, Truesilver Champ, even Guardian of Kings if you face a lot of Mage or midrange decks) is decent but solely paying for it is literally paying mana to discard cards
A few months ago, I would have agreed with you, but currently these cards are quite viable. For instance, in the case of a paladin, the other heals are very expensive so you need something for "in between".
What rank and class are you playing currently? If you are playing Druid or Paladin without Holy Light/Healing Touch I would really like to see your current deck. Maybe you are right and things can be done differently, but if you are just blabbering out a "no way!", that is not very constructive :)
Outside of Warrior armor or priest heal
is it actually worth it to place a card in your deck that gives your card more "stamina" in a battle;
example:
is it worth removing one offensive spell in a druid deck to add it healing touch
or for paladin is guadian of kings' heal 6 health worth it to have (arguably) a lower quality 7 drop as compared to a stormwind champion or ravenhold assassin
and while were at it:
where do some of the armor cards fit into this format of cost to actual game value ratio
is shield slam worthless? or mage secret ice barrier or the various armor gaining abilities of the druid?
thoughts etc?
please and thank you
It depends on your play style, It can definitely work, kripp had a video of a paladin deck full of healing!
I never tried shield slam but it could work paired with shield block.
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I think there are places for these types of cards, and long as you aren't forced to lose tempo. Shield block, at least replaces itself with another card; giving it a bit more value then let's say, healing touch. But as I said, there are places for these cards, in my opinion.
yes but I'm sure there is a play style using wisp or millhouse manastorm
but practically in theory meta is it worth it over say another card
As already mentioned, pure healing like Holy Light and Healing Touch generally does nothing but extending the game and make you lose tempo/momentum as you lost a card. If you still don't have anything else despite your heal to defend yourself with you will lose anyway. When the heal is tied to another external effect (Shield Block/Lay on Hands) or a creature (Guardian of Kings, Ancient of Lore) you still get something additional that still keeps your tempo where it is.
Pure healing is mostly useful to counter burn effects like Pyroblast or whenever you really live one more turn to preform something to follow up. I recently had a decent mage arena deck that had 3x Ice Barriers and 2x Ice Blocks where I simply extended the game with them and than procceded to 5 for 1 with Flamestrikes. Went 7/3 with it. Also, in the tournament at Blizzcon Reckful used a mage deck that took advantage of Ice Barriers and Ice Blocks together with other freeze effects to extend the game far enough to finish of the opponent with his Pyroblasts and other burn spells.
Thank you for this great source of information.
The expert at anything was once a beginner.
Like others have said if the healing doesn't have a second beneficial effect it's not really worth having. Think of it as spending a turn and a card to give your opponent another turn since you wasted yours on healing.
I think Healing Touch is a great Druid card. It heals a ton of damage and doesn't cost your entire mana pool like Lay on Hands does. It is used against Hunters, Rogues, and Mages who try to burn you down as fast as they can. Healing back 8 health when you have low health in a top deck battle vs. these decks is huge since their hero power automatically does 1/2 damage each turn.
If you're playing against a rogue/hunter/mage and they're top decking you probably already won : P
its good, just make sure you got the draw power to back it up since they're dead cards 70% of the time
Hasn't been mentioned, but I love darkscale healer on a deck built for mid/late game with beefy minions. You take trades that would normally set you up to be WIPED by an AOE, but then darkscale just removes that threat.
As for healing touch, and other pure healing cards, I don't like them. They CAN save your ass and win against an aggro deck, but more often than not, I find they just take up a spot in your hand until you are forced to use it, and it only buys one more turn. If you take a card like that, the deck HAS to be built around it.
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Not if you have 3 health and no way to heal yourself.
Oh for sure I would NEVER take a pure healing spell in Arena.
It was already said in this thread, if you have the draw to back it up, pure heals aren't bad. There's still a catch with those situations since their uses overlap pretty harsh. There's only two cards, essentially: Holy Light and Healing Touch. Holy Light is okay, but you might as well run Lay on Hands - in fact, you have to since it's the heavy draw you need unless you run some serious slowroll deck (which kinda suck these days). Healing Touch could work with more card draw of course, but only one of them and with a few beefier minions, it could steal you a couple of games.
http://www.youtube.com/user/vtxaishi
You're not going crazy, I edit 2~3 times each post
The reason a singleton Holy Light or Healing Touch is good is because of the fact that you can drop it turns 5-7 along with a minion. This allows you to advance the board state while putting yourself out of reach of Pyroblasts and Leeroy Jenkins.
A card like Lay on Hands is only playable when the board is empty or favorable, which means you can't always cast it. You almost always find a time to play the cheap heals without giving up the board.
KenQ on NA.
I'm quite glad this topic was bump, I've seen and tried Healing Touch to great success these days vs Mages and the majority of balls-to-the-wall burn decks.
Any comments from someone running them?
http://www.youtube.com/user/vtxaishi
You're not going crazy, I edit 2~3 times each post
This. I am currently running a stall deck as a Paladin with great success. I have 2x Guardian of Kings, 1x Lay on Hands and 1x Holy Light. This way, I have a high chance of having a heal ready, whatever the stage of the game is (early, mid, late).
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Pure healing is certainly a really good defense vs burn, but that is mostly due to the fact that burn is a burst threat compared to the constant threat of a creature. If you have taken, or are about to take a spell to the face, a heal negates that damage and the threat if no more. A creature will still remain on the field to attack you again next turn.
Pure healing ain't that bad as I originally thought but it mostly stands out due to the current popularity of burn. If the current meta shifts towards bigger creatures I figure it will be more important to get something on the board, either to stop it or refill the board after attacking it with your other minions, or using pure removal to get rid of it rather than healing the damage it did/would do.
You realize a sizable number of decklists that people used to reach legendary contained those cards, right? I would argue this makes them the opposite of terrible.
KenQ on NA.
A few months ago, I would have agreed with you, but currently these cards are quite viable. For instance, in the case of a paladin, the other heals are very expensive so you need something for "in between".
What rank and class are you playing currently? If you are playing Druid or Paladin without Holy Light/Healing Touch I would really like to see your current deck. Maybe you are right and things can be done differently, but if you are just blabbering out a "no way!", that is not very constructive :)
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