Hi guys, in the folowing lines you can read my thoughts about the Paladin class. This rant is completely subjective, so you're free to disagree, and if you do, feel free to write a comment about your thoghts as well.
First here's a breakdown of class-cards: Class : Minions/Weapons/Abilities (Secrets) Druid 6/0/19(0) Hunter 7/2/16(5) Mage 6/0/19(6) Paladin 4/3/18(4) Priest 7/0/18(0) Rogue 6/2/17(0) Shaman 8/2/15(0) Warlock 11/0/14(0) Warrior 7/3/15(0)
So what do these numbers tell me?
1st. The paladin has the least amount of class specific minions. 4 minion is quite few and one of them is legendary. 2nd. The paladin is kind of a jack of all trades, master of none. He has everything: minions, abilities, weapons and even secrets. Hunter is about the same, but I think his themes are more focused.
Other problems I have with the class: I think the hero power is the weakest of all. A 1/1 minion (unless you can build towards swarming) is useless. and its worst crime: it's not immediate. You have to wait a turn before you can even attack with it, and a 1/1 dies quickly. Your opponent can react and kill it with ease, or just dont give a fuck, because it wont do considerable damage anyways. Also: The hero power itself is swarm like, yet swarming has no point, because Paladins doesn't have anything like Bloodlust or Savage roar. They have single target buffs, but I can summon better minions for 2 mana.
Buffing minions instead of playing something else is risky. From what I've seen in cocatrice, removing a buffed minion is easy. Most people play with either direct removal, lot of spell damage, or silence. Another risk is that the lack of good targets make the buffs useless.
Class signature isn't supported. Almost every class has something special. Armor for warrior, Freezing for Mage, Healing for Priest, Beasts for Hunter etc.., and they have cards to support that. I'd think that Divine shield would be a mostly Paladin thing, but there are no units that interact with it, only Blood Knight, but he's neutral.
I wonder if everyone feels like the same, or I'm just bad and overreacting.
I think you have some valid points. But as a whole, I disagree. Some of the third rate abilities you listed, mostly the secrets, are only third rate if you play them as secrets. For Eye for an Eye you could trigger the secret on your turn by swinging your weapon into a strong enemy minion. Sure it will hurt, but Paladins also have great healing power. In that case, you could nuke your opponent for a lot of damage even when you don't have board control for 1 mana.
Redemption shares the same fate. Don't play it as a secret. Run your minion with a strong Deathrattle into an enemy, or if your minion was silenced and you want its effect back, do the same. Its essentially a counter silence or deathrattle for 1 mana.
Repentance I can somewhat relate too. But just because it is a 1 mana drop, doesn't mean it should be played on turn 1. Almost every minion turn 1 has 1 health. Wait till turn 8 when they have their Ragnaros sitting in their hand, then play it. Most likely, they wont have anything to play before it and Rag on the same turn, so you just delayed taking 8 damage AND used its effect for 1 mana (in this situation). Even if they know that it is Repentance, delaying an enemy plan is plenty of worth for a 1 cost card.
Humility combined with stampeding kodo is an Assassinate. You could probably build a deck revolving around that interaction right there, constantly bouncing Aldor Peacekeeper and the Kodo to kill any minion you want on the enemy's field with ease. .
I don't like Holy Wrath so I agree with you there. But if you play a Giant's deck, your opponent could be dead with a 5 mana spell at best and at worst you draw a card.
Sure Paladins aren't amazing at any one thing at first glance, but I don't think that it is a fault in its design. Sure its Hero Power isn't the best and the concept lends itself to a swarm tactic, but it is not limited to that. We just need to be a bit more creative and look beyond "buff one minion" or "swarm with lots of 1/1's". I'm sure there are a thousand and one different ideas we haven't even scratched at yet. I think the biggest trap that people fall into when they discuss Paladin's faults is that they see a ton of 1 cost cards, and play them as 1 cost cards. However, they gain so much worth for being played later(Equality, Repentance, anything that lowers health or attack), that you could probably stick to playing only neutral cards for the first few turns of the game, and setting yourself up for a huge advantage in mana by late game when you play your class specific cards.
The paladin hero power might not seem so strong at first, but Equality, Humility, Repentance and Aldor Peacekeeper make those 1/1 minions very good at saving your hard hitting minions from taking damage. It also ensures you have some board presence early on in the match even if u get a bad starting hand.
I would not consider having less hero specific minions a bad thing, it's not good, but most decks made for other heroes use only 1-4 minions that are class specific from what I have seen.
The secrets that paladins have are also very formidable, To follow up on what XParity was saying, Eye for an Eye lets you completely bypass all their taunt minions. Repentance is an amazing card late game making any minion an easy kill. Just having a face down secret is also very threat simply because you have so many secrets, your opponent cannot guess what it is.
Blessing of Kings, Blessed Champion, Blessing of Might allows you to make even the weakest of minions a threat forcing your opponent to always try and keep your side of the board empty which really difficult to do. Even though silence and destroying minions with Siphon Soul or similar cards exist, you can always play a minion, and wait until it can attack to buff.
Class signature isn't supported. Almost every class has something special. Armor for warrior, Freezing for Mage, Healing for Priest, Beasts for Hunter etc.., and they have cards to support that
That's not true, freeze is ability to shamans and hunters, healing on the paladin is fairly strong with Holy Light, many beast neutral monsters similar to ones with divine shield.
Class signature isn't supported. Almost every class has something special. Armor for warrior, Freezing for Mage, Healing for Priest, Beasts for Hunter etc.., and they have cards to support that
That's not true, freeze is ability to shamans and hunters, healing on the paladin is fairly strong with Holy Light, many beast neutral monsters similar to ones with divine shield.
What I meant here is that the mage can play a deck focused on Freeze status for example Ice lance, and Priests have Auchenai Soulpriest or Northshire Cleric. Paladin lacks such cards.
For Eye for an Eye you could trigger the secret on your turn by swinging your weapon into a strong enemy minion. Sure it will hurt, but Paladins also have great healing power. In that case, you could nuke your opponent for a lot of damage even when you don't have board control for 1 mana.
Redemption shares the same fate. Don't play it as a secret. Run your minion with a strong Deathrattle into an enemy, or if your minion was silenced and you want its effect back, do the same. Its essentially a counter silence or deathrattle for 1 mana.
Repentance I can somewhat relate too. But just because it is a 1 mana drop, doesn't mean it should be played on turn 1. Almost every minion turn 1 has 1 health. Wait till turn 8 when they have their Ragnaros sitting in their hand, then play it. Most likely, they wont have anything to play before it and Rag on the same turn, so you just delayed taking 8 damage AND used its effect for 1 mana (in this situation). Even if they know that it is Repentance, delaying an enemy plan is plenty of worth for a 1 cost card.
Eye for an eye is just hard to execute as you planned. You need: A weapon, A decent enemy minion, and enough HP to pull it off. To me, that seems like a lot of effert to make a card somehow work I agree with redemption's part, I actually made a deck where I tried that combo, but it wasn't reliable for me (though I didnt play a lot with the deck, I just didnt like it) Repentance's problem is that you need something to deal with that one HP minion. As long as it's there it has an attack value and possibly a strong effect. I'm not saying it's worthless, it combos well with elven archer, just... a bit too much combo for a single target removal. (at least as I see it)
But I stil appreciate everyones thoughts, it gave me a few ideas I can use in the future.
I agree Ferrarista, it is quite a bit of extra work just to get it to work. Though, it's no where near impossible. I think the niche that Paladins fill is that their card value comes directly from the value of your opponents cards. Though, I think Paladins really shine at falling behind and catching back up to the opponent and should be played that way.
For example, look at cards like Divine Favor or Equality. Paladin cards don't put you ahead of your opponent, they put you on equal footing as him. So, trying to play a Paladin as a class that dominates the board and hand control is kind of silly. Instead, I think if we went with the idea of being slightly behind but in control of the tempo, Paladin decks would be so far superior to a majority of others. Simply because their tempo lasts. Paladin decks only really burn out and die when you try and get ahead of your opponent. It just won't happen, none of the cards support that playstyle. Staying alive long enough to outlast your opponent's tempo and then surpassing them is what Paladins have going for them.
i wish blizzard had went with a more draw discard style for the paladin and less swarming.
for thoughts:
crusader strike and the other Holy Power gainers could of been this style
Crusader Strike
cost x
if you have a weapon deal x damage, draw 1 card
then have the holy power drainers make you discard like this
templar's verdict
cost x
if you have a weapon deal x damage for every card you discard (up to 3 cards max)
it would make the paladin alot of fun and fit the theme of paladins (cuz you could do that with healing and tanking cards just as easy) (like like heal x for x cards and get armor for x cards) and it would be fun to have to watch the cards in the deck and not deck yourself.
An unending supply of 1/1's with taunt would be SO overpowered. Your opponent would be wasting precious attacks every single time you put one of them out there. It's not so much that your opponent wouldn't kill them with ease, it's just that he'll have to waste 1 minions attack on it + have that minion take a guaranteed 1 damage. You'd need to have 2 attacks ready, every single turn, just to get 1 attack off. Miss a turn? OOPS, Paladin now has 2 1/1's with taunt that you'll need to kill both before you can get at him or his other minions.
The drain on attacks and minion health that would create would make a Paladin so hard to play against that it'd be a miracle if they ever lost.
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Hmm, well even an 0/1 with taunt will still be good
They are still susceptible to any single pinger in the game, and any AOE spell, they still cost two mana (they aren't free, but when you have nothing to use your mana for then they could be seen as "Free")
... what could be actually interesting as well....is maybe something like this
Similar to shamans random totems....
Summon a random unit to aid you A) 0/1 with taunt B) 1/1 with charge C) 2/1 no ability
all three of them would be useful, and an okay use of 2mana regardless of what you pull (not as good as any given minion card for the same 2 mana cost) .. it would add randomness to it, which i know is a terrible thing generally speaking, but it's not so random in that you use it, you end up with a unit...just the functionality of the unit differs.
1/1 with charge sounds like a good idea to me. It would go well with shaman totems which all except searing do something for you regardless of waiting for your next turn. Anything random would be too much like shaman. 2/1 and 1/1 with charge is better than searing but 0/1 with taunt is worse than stoneclaw I think the only way to balance would be to make same random possiblities or a single different one without random. 1/1 with charge would actually solve a lot of the problems paladins are having.
well depending on what you build, hero power can be annoying. Friend of mine build an annoying deck with the pally and so far, it's undefeated. Can't say what he has in it, but i'll tell you this, pally deck is how you build it for the hero power to be useful or at least effective.
Hmm, well even an 0/1 with taunt will still be good
They are still susceptible to any single pinger in the game, and any AOE spell, they still cost two mana (they aren't free, but when you have nothing to use your mana for then they could be seen as "Free")
... what could be actually interesting as well....is maybe something like this
Similar to shamans random totems....
Summon a random unit to aid you A) 0/1 with taunt B) 1/1 with charge C) 2/1 no ability
all three of them would be useful, and an okay use of 2mana regardless of what you pull (not as good as any given minion card for the same 2 mana cost) .. it would add randomness to it, which i know is a terrible thing generally speaking, but it's not so random in that you use it, you end up with a unit...just the functionality of the unit differs.
The 1/1 is currently working for me just as a filler.
My deck includes all the buffs, a couple of strong cards (Tirion, Magma Ragers) and then taunters, divine shields, Guardians of Kings, Consecrations etc.
How I play is mostly by biding my time, saving up the cards I'll need (BoK,BoM,Blessed Champion) then when I see/mark an opportunity I load up on one my minions and go for the enemy hero. It relies on me always having a card out so when the opportunity arises I can capitalise on it. Sometimes that card that I have left out is the 1/1. While I'm saving up for my cards, instead of using draw mechanics I'm putting out these 1/1s and turning them into useful cards with Defender of Argus or Sunfury Protector.
If you have the 1/1 on the field with BoK,BoM,BC, Consecration and Equality in your hand then it's almost a free ticket. (1+3+4)*2 = 16 damage. In terms of mana crystals that's 2(hero power) + 1(BoM) + 4(BoK) +5(BC) = 12, two turns or one if you already have a minion on the field.
It's quite vulnerable to early aggression and silences, you also need 2-3 openings to have a good chance. If you're using any old minion (or the 1/1) as the target for your buffs then you clear up a fair amount of deck space for cards to keep you alive and cards to create these opening.
Argent Protectors / Noble Sacrifice / Hand of Protection / taunters all help to ensure your buffed card isn't just a 1 hit wonder (if you really have them on the ropes).
Hi guys, in the folowing lines you can read my thoughts about the Paladin class. This rant is completely subjective, so you're free to disagree, and if you do, feel free to write a comment about your thoghts as well.
First here's a breakdown of class-cards:
Class : Minions/Weapons/Abilities (Secrets)
Druid 6/0/19(0)
Hunter 7/2/16(5)
Mage 6/0/19(6)
Paladin 4/3/18(4)
Priest 7/0/18(0)
Rogue 6/2/17(0)
Shaman 8/2/15(0)
Warlock 11/0/14(0)
Warrior 7/3/15(0)
So what do these numbers tell me?
1st. The paladin has the least amount of class specific minions. 4 minion is quite few and one of them is legendary.
2nd. The paladin is kind of a jack of all trades, master of none. He has everything: minions, abilities, weapons and even secrets. Hunter is about the same, but I think his themes are more focused.
Other problems I have with the class:
I think the hero power is the weakest of all. A 1/1 minion (unless you can build towards swarming) is useless. and its worst crime: it's not immediate. You have to wait a turn before you can even attack with it, and a 1/1 dies quickly. Your opponent can react and kill it with ease, or just dont give a fuck, because it wont do considerable damage anyways. Also: The hero power itself is swarm like, yet swarming has no point, because Paladins doesn't have anything like Bloodlust or Savage roar. They have single target buffs, but I can summon better minions for 2 mana.
Third rate abilities. Holy Wrath, Eye for an Eye, Humility, Redemption, Repentance are all abilities that are really hard to properly use. They are gimmicky and often wont do much.
Buffing minions instead of playing something else is risky. From what I've seen in cocatrice, removing a buffed minion is easy. Most people play with either direct removal, lot of spell damage, or silence. Another risk is that the lack of good targets make the buffs useless.
Class signature isn't supported. Almost every class has something special. Armor for warrior, Freezing for Mage, Healing for Priest, Beasts for Hunter etc.., and they have cards to support that. I'd think that Divine shield would be a mostly Paladin thing, but there are no units that interact with it, only Blood Knight, but he's neutral.
I wonder if everyone feels like the same, or I'm just bad and overreacting.
I think you have some valid points. But as a whole, I disagree. Some of the third rate abilities you listed, mostly the secrets, are only third rate if you play them as secrets. For Eye for an Eye you could trigger the secret on your turn by swinging your weapon into a strong enemy minion. Sure it will hurt, but Paladins also have great healing power. In that case, you could nuke your opponent for a lot of damage even when you don't have board control for 1 mana.
Redemption shares the same fate. Don't play it as a secret. Run your minion with a strong Deathrattle into an enemy, or if your minion was silenced and you want its effect back, do the same. Its essentially a counter silence or deathrattle for 1 mana.
Repentance I can somewhat relate too. But just because it is a 1 mana drop, doesn't mean it should be played on turn 1. Almost every minion turn 1 has 1 health. Wait till turn 8 when they have their Ragnaros sitting in their hand, then play it. Most likely, they wont have anything to play before it and Rag on the same turn, so you just delayed taking 8 damage AND used its effect for 1 mana (in this situation). Even if they know that it is Repentance, delaying an enemy plan is plenty of worth for a 1 cost card.
Humility combined with stampeding kodo is an Assassinate. You could probably build a deck revolving around that interaction right there, constantly bouncing Aldor Peacekeeper and the Kodo to kill any minion you want on the enemy's field with ease. .
I don't like Holy Wrath so I agree with you there. But if you play a Giant's deck, your opponent could be dead with a 5 mana spell at best and at worst you draw a card.
Sure Paladins aren't amazing at any one thing at first glance, but I don't think that it is a fault in its design. Sure its Hero Power isn't the best and the concept lends itself to a swarm tactic, but it is not limited to that. We just need to be a bit more creative and look beyond "buff one minion" or "swarm with lots of 1/1's". I'm sure there are a thousand and one different ideas we haven't even scratched at yet. I think the biggest trap that people fall into when they discuss Paladin's faults is that they see a ton of 1 cost cards, and play them as 1 cost cards. However, they gain so much worth for being played later(Equality, Repentance, anything that lowers health or attack), that you could probably stick to playing only neutral cards for the first few turns of the game, and setting yourself up for a huge advantage in mana by late game when you play your class specific cards.
Just my 2 cents.
The paladin hero power might not seem so strong at first, but Equality, Humility, Repentance and Aldor Peacekeeper make those 1/1 minions very good at saving your hard hitting minions from taking damage. It also ensures you have some board presence early on in the match even if u get a bad starting hand.
I would not consider having less hero specific minions a bad thing, it's not good, but most decks made for other heroes use only 1-4 minions that are class specific from what I have seen.
The secrets that paladins have are also very formidable, To follow up on what XParity was saying, Eye for an Eye lets you completely bypass all their taunt minions. Repentance is an amazing card late game making any minion an easy kill. Just having a face down secret is also very threat simply because you have so many secrets, your opponent cannot guess what it is.
Blessing of Kings, Blessed Champion, Blessing of Might allows you to make even the weakest of minions a threat forcing your opponent to always try and keep your side of the board empty which really difficult to do. Even though silence and destroying minions with Siphon Soul or similar cards exist, you can always play a minion, and wait until it can attack to buff.
That's not true, freeze is ability to shamans and hunters, healing on the paladin is fairly strong with Holy Light, many beast neutral monsters similar to ones with divine shield.
What I meant here is that the mage can play a deck focused on Freeze status for example Ice lance, and Priests have Auchenai Soulpriest or Northshire Cleric. Paladin lacks such cards.
Eye for an eye is just hard to execute as you planned. You need: A weapon, A decent enemy minion, and enough HP to pull it off. To me, that seems like a lot of effert to make a card somehow work
I agree with redemption's part, I actually made a deck where I tried that combo, but it wasn't reliable for me (though I didnt play a lot with the deck, I just didnt like it)
Repentance's problem is that you need something to deal with that one HP minion. As long as it's there it has an attack value and possibly a strong effect. I'm not saying it's worthless, it combos well with elven archer, just... a bit too much combo for a single target removal. (at least as I see it)
But I stil appreciate everyones thoughts, it gave me a few ideas I can use in the future.
I agree Ferrarista, it is quite a bit of extra work just to get it to work. Though, it's no where near impossible. I think the niche that Paladins fill is that their card value comes directly from the value of your opponents cards. Though, I think Paladins really shine at falling behind and catching back up to the opponent and should be played that way.
For example, look at cards like Divine Favor or Equality. Paladin cards don't put you ahead of your opponent, they put you on equal footing as him. So, trying to play a Paladin as a class that dominates the board and hand control is kind of silly. Instead, I think if we went with the idea of being slightly behind but in control of the tempo, Paladin decks would be so far superior to a majority of others. Simply because their tempo lasts. Paladin decks only really burn out and die when you try and get ahead of your opponent. It just won't happen, none of the cards support that playstyle. Staying alive long enough to outlast your opponent's tempo and then surpassing them is what Paladins have going for them.
i wish blizzard had went with a more draw discard style for the paladin and less swarming.
for thoughts:
crusader strike and the other Holy Power gainers could of been this style
Crusader Strike
cost x
if you have a weapon deal x damage, draw 1 card
then have the holy power drainers make you discard like this
templar's verdict
cost x
if you have a weapon deal x damage for every card you discard (up to 3 cards max)
it would make the paladin alot of fun and fit the theme of paladins (cuz you could do that with healing and tanking cards just as easy) (like like heal x for x cards and get armor for x cards) and it would be fun to have to watch the cards in the deck and not deck yourself.
Paladin has Divine shield as a class mechanic.
I also feel like something that might bump the pally up without breaking it would be 1/1 taunt, for the hero power.
This would allow the paladin to be defensively inclined (guaranteed damage reduction vs minions instead of just 1/1's being ignored completely)
Death Knights have 0/0/0(0) Minions/Weapons/Abilities (Secrets)
Just sayin'... :P
(Though supposedly DK's will be added later, as I am sure more cards will be added as well, for other classes. So don't fret.)
for balance it would need to be 0/1 taunt "at the start of your turn sacrifice this minion"
An unending supply of 1/1's with taunt would be SO overpowered. Your opponent would be wasting precious attacks every single time you put one of them out there. It's not so much that your opponent wouldn't kill them with ease, it's just that he'll have to waste 1 minions attack on it + have that minion take a guaranteed 1 damage. You'd need to have 2 attacks ready, every single turn, just to get 1 attack off. Miss a turn? OOPS, Paladin now has 2 1/1's with taunt that you'll need to kill both before you can get at him or his other minions.
The drain on attacks and minion health that would create would make a Paladin so hard to play against that it'd be a miracle if they ever lost.
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Hmm, well even an 0/1 with taunt will still be good
They are still susceptible to any single pinger in the game, and any AOE spell, they still cost two mana (they aren't free, but when you have nothing to use your mana for then they could be seen as "Free")
... what could be actually interesting as well....is maybe something like this
Similar to shamans random totems....
Summon a random unit to aid you
A) 0/1 with taunt
B) 1/1 with charge
C) 2/1 no ability
all three of them would be useful, and an okay use of 2mana regardless of what you pull (not as good as any given minion card for the same 2 mana cost) .. it would add randomness to it, which i know is a terrible thing generally speaking, but it's not so random in that you use it, you end up with a unit...just the functionality of the unit differs.
1/1 with charge sounds like a good idea to me. It would go well with shaman totems which all except searing do something for you regardless of waiting for your next turn. Anything random would be too much like shaman. 2/1 and 1/1 with charge is better than searing but 0/1 with taunt is worse than stoneclaw I think the only way to balance would be to make same random possiblities or a single different one without random. 1/1 with charge would actually solve a lot of the problems paladins are having.
Let me change your mind
well depending on what you build, hero power can be annoying. Friend of mine build an annoying deck with the pally and so far, it's undefeated. Can't say what he has in it, but i'll tell you this, pally deck is how you build it for the hero power to be useful or at least effective.
i do like that, its like a peasant caller :)
The 1/1 is currently working for me just as a filler.
My deck includes all the buffs, a couple of strong cards (Tirion, Magma Ragers) and then taunters, divine shields, Guardians of Kings, Consecrations etc.
How I play is mostly by biding my time, saving up the cards I'll need (BoK,BoM,Blessed Champion) then when I see/mark an opportunity I load up on one my minions and go for the enemy hero. It relies on me always having a card out so when the opportunity arises I can capitalise on it. Sometimes that card that I have left out is the 1/1. While I'm saving up for my cards, instead of using draw mechanics I'm putting out these 1/1s and turning them into useful cards with Defender of Argus or Sunfury Protector.
If you have the 1/1 on the field with BoK,BoM,BC, Consecration and Equality in your hand then it's almost a free ticket. (1+3+4)*2 = 16 damage. In terms of mana crystals that's 2(hero power) + 1(BoM) + 4(BoK) +5(BC) = 12, two turns or one if you already have a minion on the field.
It's quite vulnerable to early aggression and silences, you also need 2-3 openings to have a good chance. If you're using any old minion (or the 1/1) as the target for your buffs then you clear up a fair amount of deck space for cards to keep you alive and cards to create these opening.
Argent Protectors / Noble Sacrifice / Hand of Protection / taunters all help to ensure your buffed card isn't just a 1 hit wonder (if you really have them on the ropes).