Can control Healadin work? The healing is nice, but what's the win condition? I feel like the endgame for almost every other control deck is more scary than for Paladin.
Can aggro Healadin work? I'm not sure what the healing would be for unless it's to buff Lighwardens and get Happy Ghouls out.
I guess that leaves Mid range and Combo (OTK). What does the mid range look like?
Healing is good as you can get good tempo card like spellstone and templates out, without dk your latecomers is also spamming the board with cheap big minions
In my opinion Healadin now has (more or less, I'd say a bit less but still) the same problem of Discardlock: they're good decks and quite enjoyable too, but they lack a win condition or they haven't found it yet.
Yes, we have Holy Wrath OTK and DK OTK, but they're not as solid as a Malygos Druid OTK for example.
I think there will be a moment when this deck will shine, but for now it has too many rivals from the past sets which are suffocating the archetype.
I think there will be a moment when this deck will shine, but for now it has too many rivals from the past sets which are suffocating the archetype.
Everything gets more interesting when the DKs rotate out. The strong classes correspond with the strong DKs for the most part, and poor Pally is one of 3-4 weak DKs.
Can control Healadin work? The healing is nice, but what's the win condition? I feel like the endgame for almost every other control deck is more scary than for Paladin.
Can aggro Healadin work? I'm not sure what the healing would be for unless it's to buff Lighwardens and get Happy Ghouls out.
I guess that leaves Mid range and Combo (OTK). What does the mid range look like?
There's no Midrange element to it. Midrange requires a burst finish. Think Deathrattle Hunter's Katrina
Note that it's in the works so it could do for some tweaking. I haven't tested out the corpsetakers yet.
Basically grab the board fast and go aggressive to grab the board. Then if you're against a slow deck play the aggressor and push for the face. If against a fast deck, play for value as they wont' be able to rush you down.
Bittertide is a wonderful pick, though it's VERY frightening against shaman who can net up to 24 damage to you with a well placed volcano. Otherwise, just drop it down.
The power comes from how you can keep putting threats on the board. Turn 2 3/5s into windfuried 3/3s and Glass Knight into bittertides into 6/6 and 8/8 taunts into Lich King and tirion. All of which on a hero you can't kill by wearing them down.
I actually haven't had the chance to really use High Priest Thekal as he keeps showing up too late to matter. The deck works without him. But he provides the option for +30 health if you're up against decks like Maly druid with a limited range.
But overall this is the mentality that I see healadin working in. Not control but a faster tempo style with constant pressure.
I mean, the win condition is beating them to death with your big 4 mana 8/8s and big spellstone dudes while outlasting them with your crazy amount of armor (for a paladin) and health. Not all win conditions have to be some sick combo. It's not a very good one relative to other ones like you point out, but it's still fun. I've tried the OTK stuff (bad, mostly), and a janky version of heal-zoo, but the only one that feels solid is the "midrange" one with the spellstones and 4 mana 8/8s (similar but not identical to what iandakar posted), and I even threw some blackguards in the mix because I like bad cards.
I mean, the win condition is beating them to death with your big 4 mana 8/8s and big spellstone dudes while outlasting them with your crazy amount of armor (for a paladin) and health. Not all win conditions have to be some sick combo. It's not a very good one relative to other ones like you point out, but it's still fun. I've tried the OTK stuff (bad, mostly), and a janky version of heal-zoo, but the only one that feels solid is the "midrange" one with the spellstones and 4 mana 8/8s (similar but not identical to what iandakar posted), and I even threw some blackguards in the mix because I like bad cards.
Every deck needs a win condition. WHAT that win condition is depends on the archetype though:
Aggro: Claim the board early and/or start blasting the face before the opponent can respond and recover. (Odd Rogue is an example)
Tempo: Steal Tempo early and keep pressure with the ability to always go for the kill the second the opponent goes soft. (Even/Odd Paladin)
Midrange: Focuses on a powerful burst of damage from the middle turns (4-8) to overturn a lost board and win from nowhere (Deathrattle Hunter)
Combo: Find the cards that create the condition that wins you the game. (Malydruid)
Control: drain your opponent of threats until they can no longer stop you. (Odd Warrior)
A deck that 'doesn't have a win condition' means it doesn't do any of those things. For example a heal Paladin set in a more 'control' style (equality and the like) won't have an early game so aggor/Tempo fails, won't have enough removal for a control deck, and will typically rely on, say, playing their Loa or healing a lot, which while NICE doesn't actually KILL your opponent, so it's not Combo. Thus it's just a Demo deck: it's a deck that shows off cool effects and..that's that.
Your deck definitely sounds midrange as it probably doesn't do much except setup and activate the spirits/heal cards then starts slamming threats. My deck is Tempo as I start off with 3/5s from turn 2-3 and keep going until they can't keep up or I lose the board.
I can see a potential Control mindset if you drop most of the heal synergies focus on holding the board, then use Tekal+fast healing to get to 60 health. You would slaughter aggro and most other decks with the exceptions being Deathrattle Hunter, Kingsbane and Shudderwock.
Just don't try to rely on the tiger for it. Tiger on his own is nice but THAT strong in such a deck and the OTK version is a combo deck and should be hunting for cards rather than messing around with healing mechanics.
Too bad this topic is about Standard, I was actually wondering if the Molten Giants - High Priest Thekal is a good combo to have in a deck.
I don't know. It's insane to go Thekal/molt/molt at turn 3. But until you get Thekal the moltens are dead, especially since the entire point of the deck is to keep healing itself. and you already have 2 6/6s and 2 8/8s without relying on Thekal.
I DID find if I went OVERBoARD on everything that hurts your hero then I go low in health very fast, so THAT can be a thing if you can quickly pull back up. Worth a try.
Going value control with Dragons and Cathedral Gargoyle. [cardEquality[/card] + Dragonmaw Scorcher is a good board clear. I think there is something here and the Heal Package + Dragon Package may just equal a pretty good Control Deck
I've tried to make healadin work every expansion. While this is definitely the best its ever been, its still not close to matching the power level of top meta decks. To quote the classic movie WarGames, when it comes to healadin, "the only winning move is not to play."
Going value control with Dragons and Cathedral Gargoyle. [cardEquality[/card] + Dragonmaw Scorcher is a good board clear. I think there is something here and the Heal Package + Dragon Package may just equal a pretty good Control Deck
I don't know. Paladin has 10000 ways to remove a board after an Equality (Pyro, Conc, ext.) But they only have 2 Equalities. I guess there's shrink ray.
Gargoyle isn't useful here actually. This is where knowing your archetype is VERRYY important. Shielded Minibot was good because paladin was playing Tempo (Secret paladin was known for having "the perfect 1 drop, 2, drop, 3, drop 4, drop ext") . Control can't really USE a 2/2 shield since aggro will just keep growing behind it.
OTOH, you DO get a nice AoE+massive taunt, a 7 damage minion blaster with a body, and can use the Panic Button in Deathwing. AND you get more spells from Firetree Witchdoctor
Again don't think of small fry minions to 'block'. Think removing creatures and board clears. you want the board empty and you want to spend very few cards to do it.
Ok I was against it at first but ... I'm up for trying it. (#$)#09 Dragon Paladin from was the first time I got to rank 5 (after BRM in fact, when dragons still sucked :P. I had A LOT more time to play with back then). I'm up for trying it out.
Seems people agree that control won't work? Even with 60 health, Paladin can't outlast infinite armor, infinite taunt, infinite zombeast, infinite water elementals. There's just nothing in Paladin that can keep up.
I'm having fun trying things out. I'll try to be a little more aggressive like iandakar. I have the dragons to try dragon out as well. I wish I had Kangor's army to try a mech variant.
Seems people agree that control won't work? Even with 60 health, Paladin can't outlast infinite armor, infinite taunt, infinite zombeast, infinite water elementals. There's just nothing in Paladin that can keep up.
I'm having fun trying things out. I'll try to be a little more aggressive like iandakar. I have the dragons to try dragon out as well. I wish I had Kangor's army to try a mech variant.
Funny thing is, the problem is that we are TOO control deck oriented.
When a meta focuses too much on a particular style, that archetype starts to 'perfect' itself and become oppressive. Aggro, in pure form, becomes a 'face' deck that kills in turn 3 but dies if the opponent isn't dead by turn 5. Tempo in its purest form starts to highroll: if it gets the right cards in hand it turns into God. If not then it dies. But it's God hand is so strong nothing can reliably take it on.
Midrange, oddly enough, turns into Combo. Basically Midrange's biggest desire is to ignore the early game, draw their burst, then burst you down..which is what Combo does. Midrange, though, is too 'skittish' to do it so instead it waters down it's 'combo' to be more consistent and picks up either a tempoish early game or controlish cards to survive the early game.
(Imagine if Deathrattle hunter didn't have to care about eggs, just recruiting big beasts, copying them, perhaps dropping that 3/12 taunt. putting more big beasts in the deck, and just flinging everything to face, but hunter doesn't have enough card draw or stall tools to do it, so they watered it down with eggs)
Control starts to get GREEDY, then either goes Mill/Fatigue or Infinite Value. Shudderwock and Taunt Druid are the final forms of Control decks. Non-infinite 'control' are decks that don't feel secure enough to be that greedy.
This is why you can see me saying that 'last year was too powerful'.
So yeah, if you want to deal with Final Form control decks, you need to outrace them. Paladin is actually very good at fast tempo, once we stop trying to make them go control all the time. They always sucked as a control class.
I play a small Lifesteal package in the deck I am playing now (it is in wild):
It contains Wickerflame, Zilliax, Kangor, Thekal, 2 Corpsetakers and what, in my opinion at least, works very well for this package are the 2 Darkspears I added. It also has Ashmore for support.
I also played this in Standard. I added Da Undatakah, 2 Mechanical Whelps, 2 Rotten Applebaums (deathrattle and heal synergy) and 1 Battleaxe (with the overkill: give a minion in your hand +2/+2).
So far I haven't found a way to make it work. By work I mean at or near 50% win-rate. Unfortunately Paladin doesn't have anything currently to support a midrange style. It lacks consistent and good/decent minions at each mana cost to snowball turn over turn. The best healadin I had was under-performing because of the reliance on heal synergy cards. I tried to mirror zoo warlock a bit, but unfortunately the lack of card draw hurt the deck too hard. The archetype needs better value at 2 and 3 mana, and then it may have a chance to shine.
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Can control Healadin work? The healing is nice, but what's the win condition? I feel like the endgame for almost every other control deck is more scary than for Paladin.
Can aggro Healadin work? I'm not sure what the healing would be for unless it's to buff Lighwardens and get Happy Ghouls out.
I guess that leaves Mid range and Combo (OTK). What does the mid range look like?
Otk dk paladin is popular atm.
Healing is good as you can get good tempo card like spellstone and templates out, without dk your latecomers is also spamming the board with cheap big minions
In my opinion Healadin now has (more or less, I'd say a bit less but still) the same problem of Discardlock: they're good decks and quite enjoyable too, but they lack a win condition or they haven't found it yet.
Yes, we have Holy Wrath OTK and DK OTK, but they're not as solid as a Malygos Druid OTK for example.
I think there will be a moment when this deck will shine, but for now it has too many rivals from the past sets which are suffocating the archetype.
Everything gets more interesting when the DKs rotate out. The strong classes correspond with the strong DKs for the most part, and poor Pally is one of 3-4 weak DKs.
There's no Midrange element to it. Midrange requires a burst finish. Think Deathrattle Hunter's Katrina
Here's an example:
Note that it's in the works so it could do for some tweaking. I haven't tested out the corpsetakers yet.
Basically grab the board fast and go aggressive to grab the board. Then if you're against a slow deck play the aggressor and push for the face. If against a fast deck, play for value as they wont' be able to rush you down.
Bittertide is a wonderful pick, though it's VERY frightening against shaman who can net up to 24 damage to you with a well placed volcano. Otherwise, just drop it down.
The power comes from how you can keep putting threats on the board. Turn 2 3/5s into windfuried 3/3s and Glass Knight into bittertides into 6/6 and 8/8 taunts into Lich King and tirion. All of which on a hero you can't kill by wearing them down.
I actually haven't had the chance to really use High Priest Thekal as he keeps showing up too late to matter. The deck works without him. But he provides the option for +30 health if you're up against decks like Maly druid with a limited range.
But overall this is the mentality that I see healadin working in. Not control but a faster tempo style with constant pressure.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
I mean, the win condition is beating them to death with your big 4 mana 8/8s and big spellstone dudes while outlasting them with your crazy amount of armor (for a paladin) and health. Not all win conditions have to be some sick combo. It's not a very good one relative to other ones like you point out, but it's still fun. I've tried the OTK stuff (bad, mostly), and a janky version of heal-zoo, but the only one that feels solid is the "midrange" one with the spellstones and 4 mana 8/8s (similar but not identical to what iandakar posted), and I even threw some blackguards in the mix because I like bad cards.
Too bad this topic is about Standard, I was actually wondering if the Molten Giants - High Priest Thekal is a good combo to have in a deck.
I don't know. It's insane to go Thekal/molt/molt at turn 3. But until you get Thekal the moltens are dead, especially since the entire point of the deck is to keep healing itself. and you already have 2 6/6s and 2 8/8s without relying on Thekal.
I DID find if I went OVERBoARD on everything that hurts your hero then I go low in health very fast, so THAT can be a thing if you can quickly pull back up. Worth a try.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
Going value control with Dragons and Cathedral Gargoyle. [cardEquality[/card] + Dragonmaw Scorcher is a good board clear. I think there is something here and the Heal Package + Dragon Package may just equal a pretty good Control Deck
I've tried to make healadin work every expansion. While this is definitely the best its ever been, its still not close to matching the power level of top meta decks. To quote the classic movie WarGames, when it comes to healadin, "the only winning move is not to play."
I don't know. Paladin has 10000 ways to remove a board after an Equality (Pyro, Conc, ext.) But they only have 2 Equalities. I guess there's shrink ray.
Gargoyle isn't useful here actually. This is where knowing your archetype is VERRYY important. Shielded Minibot was good because paladin was playing Tempo (Secret paladin was known for having "the perfect 1 drop, 2, drop, 3, drop 4, drop ext") . Control can't really USE a 2/2 shield since aggro will just keep growing behind it.
OTOH, you DO get a nice AoE+massive taunt, a 7 damage minion blaster with a body, and can use the Panic Button in Deathwing. AND you get more spells from Firetree Witchdoctor
Again don't think of small fry minions to 'block'. Think removing creatures and board clears. you want the board empty and you want to spend very few cards to do it.
Ok I was against it at first but ... I'm up for trying it. (#$)#09 Dragon Paladin from was the first time I got to rank 5 (after BRM in fact, when dragons still sucked :P. I had A LOT more time to play with back then). I'm up for trying it out.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
Seems people agree that control won't work? Even with 60 health, Paladin can't outlast infinite armor, infinite taunt, infinite zombeast, infinite water elementals. There's just nothing in Paladin that can keep up.
I'm having fun trying things out. I'll try to be a little more aggressive like iandakar. I have the dragons to try dragon out as well. I wish I had Kangor's army to try a mech variant.
Funny thing is, the problem is that we are TOO control deck oriented.
When a meta focuses too much on a particular style, that archetype starts to 'perfect' itself and become oppressive. Aggro, in pure form, becomes a 'face' deck that kills in turn 3 but dies if the opponent isn't dead by turn 5. Tempo in its purest form starts to highroll: if it gets the right cards in hand it turns into God. If not then it dies. But it's God hand is so strong nothing can reliably take it on.
Midrange, oddly enough, turns into Combo. Basically Midrange's biggest desire is to ignore the early game, draw their burst, then burst you down..which is what Combo does. Midrange, though, is too 'skittish' to do it so instead it waters down it's 'combo' to be more consistent and picks up either a tempoish early game or controlish cards to survive the early game.
(Imagine if Deathrattle hunter didn't have to care about eggs, just recruiting big beasts, copying them, perhaps dropping that 3/12 taunt. putting more big beasts in the deck, and just flinging everything to face, but hunter doesn't have enough card draw or stall tools to do it, so they watered it down with eggs)
Control starts to get GREEDY, then either goes Mill/Fatigue or Infinite Value. Shudderwock and Taunt Druid are the final forms of Control decks. Non-infinite 'control' are decks that don't feel secure enough to be that greedy.
This is why you can see me saying that 'last year was too powerful'.
So yeah, if you want to deal with Final Form control decks, you need to outrace them. Paladin is actually very good at fast tempo, once we stop trying to make them go control all the time. They always sucked as a control class.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
I play a small Lifesteal package in the deck I am playing now (it is in wild):
It contains Wickerflame, Zilliax, Kangor, Thekal, 2 Corpsetakers and what, in my opinion at least, works very well for this package are the 2 Darkspears I added. It also has Ashmore for support.
I also played this in Standard. I added Da Undatakah, 2 Mechanical Whelps, 2 Rotten Applebaums (deathrattle and heal synergy) and 1 Battleaxe (with the overkill: give a minion in your hand +2/+2).
So far I haven't found a way to make it work. By work I mean at or near 50% win-rate. Unfortunately Paladin doesn't have anything currently to support a midrange style. It lacks consistent and good/decent minions at each mana cost to snowball turn over turn. The best healadin I had was under-performing because of the reliance on heal synergy cards. I tried to mirror zoo warlock a bit, but unfortunately the lack of card draw hurt the deck too hard. The archetype needs better value at 2 and 3 mana, and then it may have a chance to shine.