Been playing this deck for a few days now, and having a decent level of success -- but I'm still newbish and I'm sure there's lessons to be learned, so I'd love to hear some input/advice from the community on this deck:
You have an extremely high amount of 1-drops in the deck. Blessing of might is usually not very good. A deck like this needs Divine Favor to keep up because you'll run out of cards super fast. Blessed champion isn't very good either because viable cards to buff with it will likely die fast. Divine shield decks are something that never really seems to work out... The divine shield cards just aren't powerful enough because they have no immediate effects on the board.
I think you're probably right about the number of 1-drops, but I always find myself feeling paranoid about not getting a playable minion on turn 1. Probably not something I should overly stress about, and there are other cards that could take their place more effectively.
Having turn 1 minions is pretty pointless, and it's something that you really don't need to worry about. I have a deck that doesn't play any minions until turn 4 and it's pretty strong. My friend who plays hearthstone thought the same thing for a very long time, and he put lots of value on leper gnome. He eventually realized that it's useless in most decks.
Hmmm I'll have to try going less on the 1-drops, then... That'll make it easier to work in Divine Favor and maybe some other utility cards or a few more mid-drops.. Now if only I had the dust for a Blood Knight...
SO COOL. Lel. No, it really is handy, though, innit. You can edit your OP to include it.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If you see a post that you find objectionable, report it, it helps keep the forum clean. But be aware people are allowed a lot of latitude.
If you find my posts to be rude, objectionable, or whatever, well, I got tired of writing polite TL; DR (Too Long, Didn't Read) posts at crybaby whiners. So now I just make it short and nasty.
If you find that funny, well and good. If you find that sad, that's even better.
The Silvermoon Guardians did feel a little bit like a "nice but not needed" thing.. I guess I don't naturally favor weapons, so that didn't cross my mind.. I"ll try swapping them for Truesilver Champions -- Blessed Champion, though -- really not that good? It's dealt the finishing blow for me in a few good games
Blessed Champion, though -- really not that good? It's dealt the finishing blow for me in a few good games
Lotta players are going to try to lead you down the path of weenie Divine Favor or Control. Now, yeah, okay, I ain't sayin Ebichuman is one of those, or even that if s/he was, that that's wrong. But it's something you gotta think about. Players are going to give you advice and say one card or another is good or bad based on their experience - but if you're doing something that's conceptually new, a lot of players aren't going to be able to give you good advice myself friggin included. That post I put up five hours ago, I was going to write Truesilver Champion and Consecration as part of the post, then I took another look at the deck, really looked at it, and I figured "wellll maybe I oughtn't to be making these suggestions, here's an animal I haven't seen before, let's see what develops. Maybe it'll be Divine Shield weenie aggro into buff doubling attack power for GG."
You want, I don't know, an example of that sort of thinking? Let's say you have a rock. Nice round rock. Rolls. Everyone that sees rock says "rolly rock roll!" Then you have some, I don't know, heathen. He says "Let's chop this thing into thirds, drill a hole into the middle third, put a stick through the hole." People are like "wut? rolly rock is awesome! don't u dik with rolly rock! lol ur thing not roll it lame" But it's stuff like that that ends up making a wheel and axle.
Anyways, Divine Shield. Long as I'm yappin, I might as well shoot a few things at ya. Nothing revolutionary, mind, just stuff.
1. You pay for Divine Shield. Silvermoon Guardian vs Chillwind Yeti; one has more attack and defense, one doesn't. The difference? Divine Shield. So would you rather have generic beef to survive hits and hit twice for four, or a special ability to survive hits and hit twice for three?
2. Numbers. The big numbers are "2", "3", 4", and "5" right now. Waddafux? Breaking it down - weenie aggro often runs a lot of 2-toughness minions that aren't subject to hero power removal and early mass removal like Fan of Knives, residual from Swipe, etc. 3 attack is characteristic of a lot of 2-drop minions. 4 attack is the generic attack of mid-range beef minions, best generic of those being Chillwind Yeti. 5 defense is the generic defense of mid-range beef minions, including Sen'jin Shieldmasta, Chillwind Yeti, yada yada.
So what you're really looking at with 3 attack on Silvermoon Guardian isn't just "one less attack". You're looking at dropping the functional attack on that minion and the defense as well, to 2-drop territory (look at all the 2-drops with 3 attack or 3 health.) As opposed to taking generic Chillwind Yeti, which has the maximum values for its drops in that sweet spot of 4 and 5. It's like you got a reallllly good 2-drop *at the cost of a 4-drop*, see?
Now yeah, when is Divine Shield better? When you're eating a Fireball, or up against Ironbark Protector or basically stuff that would put Chillwind Yeti a hundred feet under the ground - only *then*, if there's overkill, is Divine Shield better. But usually you can't hit whatever it is back very well with just 3 attack, and at 3 attack, you're not going to be too relevant to board control.
So *theoretically* mind - you can make up the difference in buffs. But your opponent will still be able to do a small poke to get rid of Divine Shield into overrun or regular removal. Moving on -
3. Weenies. You have cards that apply Divine Shield to other minions, but if you think about it, the ideal use of Divine Shield isn't on some small weenie that does some irrelevant poking. Ideally you cast it on something big and nasty that hits something else that's big and nasty. Then the other big nasty dies, and your big nasty lives unscratched. Now look at the deck. How many big nasties do you have? Not many.
4. 2-for-1 buffs &c. Generically, buffs are bad. Let's say you Mark of the Wild on Ragnaros the Firelord. Now you have a 10/10 that dishes out 8 damage a turn without taking any, awesome. Or . . . you have a single target for Hex.
So how does the OP deck get around that? You have a minion - any minion - survive. Then you buff it with attack buffs and Divine Shield possibly, attack with it, Divine Shield again. Or if a minion already has Divine Shield, buff, attack, reapply Divine Shield.
Now yeah I don't know if that's the concept behind the deck, but - something like that. But once you start putting in all that stuff, you have less room for Equality and Aldor Peacekeeper and Truesilver Champion and stuff that's considered "given" for a lot of Paladin builds. So who am I to say, start putting in this or that? What, do I say put in Sunfury Protector, Defender of Argus for imparted Taunt to Divine Shield minions? Or Windfury Harpy to get truly gigantic effects out of each buff? At some point, the deck just gets steered away from the original intent. So yeah maybe I might have some ideas whatever, but generally I'd say they're probably not awfully better than others.
If you see a post that you find objectionable, report it, it helps keep the forum clean. But be aware people are allowed a lot of latitude.
If you find my posts to be rude, objectionable, or whatever, well, I got tired of writing polite TL; DR (Too Long, Didn't Read) posts at crybaby whiners. So now I just make it short and nasty.
If you find that funny, well and good. If you find that sad, that's even better.
If you don't have access to the legendaries, then you will be be able to find some replacements (+1 Argent Commander, +Shattered Clerics etc). You'll love the synergy of good early board control and King Mukla as well as the ape's synergy with Divine Favor.
As far as the aggro decks I played, the one in the link is by far the most enjoyable and solid Paladin Aggro. While the post above mine really hits bullseye as far as strategy is concerned, I will simply add that you need to make up a deck that is working on synergy rather than cards that everyone thinks are 'overpowered'.
If you go non-Control Paladin, the name of the game is board control and good trades. The one thing you need to keep in mind is that you should maintain a good momentum from turn 3 and on (unlike Zoo let's say, that starts strong and strives to maintain a solid board up to Doomguard). The way to deal with overwhelming boards is Equality, which is (in my opinion) one of the best cards in the game. Whatever you try from Paladin, you should keep Equality always on your list, because it does work wonders on both aggressive strategies and control-ish ones.
Blessed Champion, though -- really not that good? It's dealt the finishing blow for me in a few good games
Lotta players are going to try to lead you down the path of weenie Divine Favor or Control. Now, yeah, okay, I ain't sayin Ebichuman is one of those, or even that if s/he was, that that's wrong. But it's something you gotta think about. Players are going to give you advice and say one card or another is good or bad based on their experience - but if you're doing something that's conceptually new, a lot of players aren't going to be able to give you good advice myself friggin included. That post I put up five hours ago, I was going to write Truesilver Champion and Consecration as part of the post, then I took another look at the deck, really looked at it, and I figured "wellll maybe I oughtn't to be making these suggestions, here's an animal I haven't seen before, let's see what develops. Maybe it'll be Divine Shield weenie aggro into buff doubling attack power for GG."
You want, I don't know, an example of that sort of thinking? Let's say you have a rock. Nice round rock. Rolls. Everyone that sees rock says "rolly rock roll!" Then you have some, I don't know, heathen. He says "Let's chop this thing into thirds, drill a hole into the middle third, put a stick through the hole." People are like "wut? rolly rock is awesome! don't u dik with rolly rock! lol ur thing not roll it lame" But it's stuff like that that ends up making a wheel and axle.
Anyways, Divine Shield. Long as I'm yappin, I might as well shoot a few things at ya. Nothing revolutionary, mind, just stuff.
1. You pay for Divine Shield. Silvermoon Guardian vs Chillwind Yeti; one has more attack and defense, one doesn't. The difference? Divine Shield. So would you rather have generic beef to survive hits and hit twice for four, or a special ability to survive hits and hit twice for three?
2. Numbers. The big numbers are "2", "3", 4", and "5" right now. Waddafux? Breaking it down - weenie aggro often runs a lot of 2-toughness minions that aren't subject to hero power removal and early mass removal like Fan of Knives, residual from Swipe, etc. 3 attack is characteristic of a lot of 2-drop minions. 4 attack is the generic attack of mid-range beef minions, best generic of those being Chillwind Yeti. 5 defense is the generic defense of mid-range beef minions, including Sen'jin Shieldmasta, Chillwind Yeti, yada yada.
So what you're really looking at with 3 attack on Silvermoon Guardian isn't just "one less attack". You're looking at dropping the functional attack on that minion and the defense as well, to 2-drop territory (look at all the 2-drops with 3 attack or 3 health.) As opposed to taking generic Chillwind Yeti, which has the maximum values for its drops in that sweet spot of 4 and 5. It's like you got a reallllly good 2-drop *at the cost of a 4-drop*, see?
Now yeah, when is Divine Shield better? When you're eating a Fireball, or up against Ironbark Protector or basically stuff that would put Chillwind Yeti a hundred feet under the ground - only *then*, if there's overkill, is Divine Shield better. But usually you can't hit whatever it is back very well with just 3 attack, and at 3 attack, you're not going to be too relevant to board control.
So *theoretically* mind - you can make up the difference in buffs. But your opponent will still be able to do a small poke to get rid of Divine Shield into overrun or regular removal. Moving on -
3. Weenies. You have cards that apply Divine Shield to other minions, but if you think about it, the ideal use of Divine Shield isn't on some small weenie that does some irrelevant poking. Ideally you cast it on something big and nasty that hits something else that's big and nasty. Then the other big nasty dies, and your big nasty lives unscratched. Now look at the deck. How many big nasties do you have? Not many.
4. 2-for-1 buffs &c. Generically, buffs are bad. Let's say you Mark of the Wild on Ragnaros the Firelord. Now you have a 10/10 that dishes out 8 damage a turn without taking any, awesome. Or . . . you have a single target for Hex.
So how does the OP deck get around that? You have a minion - any minion - survive. Then you buff it with attack buffs and Divine Shield possibly, attack with it, Divine Shield again. Or if a minion already has Divine Shield, buff, attack, reapply Divine Shield.
Now yeah I don't know if that's the concept behind the deck, but - something like that. But once you start putting in all that stuff, you have less room for Equality and Aldor Peacekeeper and Truesilver Champion and stuff that's considered "given" for a lot of Paladin builds. So who am I to say, start putting in this or that? What, do I say put in Sunfury Protector, Defender of Argus for imparted Taunt to Divine Shield minions? Or Windfury Harpy to get truly gigantic effects out of each buff? At some point, the deck just gets steered away from the original intent. So yeah maybe I might have some ideas whatever, but generally I'd say they're probably not awfully better than others.
Wow.. Awesome thoughts! I mean, I don't entirely feel qualified to even say if I'm blazing any sweet new ground, seeing as this deck has as yet only taken me to Rank 17 which isn't anything to write home about... But it is plenty of things to think about as far as little tweaks!
Made a few adjustments to the deck based on some of the feedback here -- I'm definitely loving the Equality clears, which really helps on those occasions I get behind on board control. I'm not sure about Divine Favor, though... I don't usually find myself needing to use it very often, and I'm thinking I could swap it out for another minion, maybe a second Aldor Peacekeeper or Defender of Argus.
Further thoughts? I know Pally isn't a popular class in the meta right now, but I have a soft spot for them.. And dagnabbit I'll take this deck somewhere halfway decent eventually!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Been playing this deck for a few days now, and having a decent level of success -- but I'm still newbish and I'm sure there's lessons to be learned, so I'd love to hear some input/advice from the community on this deck:
You have an extremely high amount of 1-drops in the deck. Blessing of might is usually not very good. A deck like this needs Divine Favor to keep up because you'll run out of cards super fast. Blessed champion isn't very good either because viable cards to buff with it will likely die fast. Divine shield decks are something that never really seems to work out... The divine shield cards just aren't powerful enough because they have no immediate effects on the board.
I think you're probably right about the number of 1-drops, but I always find myself feeling paranoid about not getting a playable minion on turn 1. Probably not something I should overly stress about, and there are other cards that could take their place more effectively.
Having turn 1 minions is pretty pointless, and it's something that you really don't need to worry about. I have a deck that doesn't play any minions until turn 4 and it's pretty strong. My friend who plays hearthstone thought the same thing for a very long time, and he put lots of value on leper gnome. He eventually realized that it's useless in most decks.
Hmmm I'll have to try going less on the 1-drops, then... That'll make it easier to work in Divine Favor and maybe some other utility cards or a few more mid-drops.. Now if only I had the dust for a Blood Knight...
If you follow the link provided in the OP, you see upper right corner a BBCode that looks like [deck2]50647[/deck2] (without "2" in "deck2")
Using it lets you do THIS in your post.
SO COOL. Lel. No, it really is handy, though, innit. You can edit your OP to include it.
If you see a post that you find objectionable, report it, it helps keep the forum clean. But be aware people are allowed a lot of latitude.
If you find my posts to be rude, objectionable, or whatever, well, I got tired of writing polite TL; DR (Too Long, Didn't Read) posts at crybaby whiners. So now I just make it short and nasty.
If you find that funny, well and good. If you find that sad, that's even better.
I would drop the 2 Silvermoon Guardians in a heartbeat for Truesilver Champions. Blessed Champion is too gimmicky to be worth fielding it and with all the aggro decks around another Consecration could take it's place.
The Silvermoon Guardians did feel a little bit like a "nice but not needed" thing.. I guess I don't naturally favor weapons, so that didn't cross my mind.. I"ll try swapping them for Truesilver Champions -- Blessed Champion, though -- really not that good? It's dealt the finishing blow for me in a few good games
Lotta players are going to try to lead you down the path of weenie Divine Favor or Control. Now, yeah, okay, I ain't sayin Ebichuman is one of those, or even that if s/he was, that that's wrong. But it's something you gotta think about. Players are going to give you advice and say one card or another is good or bad based on their experience - but if you're doing something that's conceptually new, a lot of players aren't going to be able to give you good advice myself friggin included. That post I put up five hours ago, I was going to write Truesilver Champion and Consecration as part of the post, then I took another look at the deck, really looked at it, and I figured "wellll maybe I oughtn't to be making these suggestions, here's an animal I haven't seen before, let's see what develops. Maybe it'll be Divine Shield weenie aggro into buff doubling attack power for GG."
You want, I don't know, an example of that sort of thinking? Let's say you have a rock. Nice round rock. Rolls. Everyone that sees rock says "rolly rock roll!" Then you have some, I don't know, heathen. He says "Let's chop this thing into thirds, drill a hole into the middle third, put a stick through the hole." People are like "wut? rolly rock is awesome! don't u dik with rolly rock! lol ur thing not roll it lame" But it's stuff like that that ends up making a wheel and axle.
Anyways, Divine Shield. Long as I'm yappin, I might as well shoot a few things at ya. Nothing revolutionary, mind, just stuff.
1. You pay for Divine Shield. Silvermoon Guardian vs Chillwind Yeti; one has more attack and defense, one doesn't. The difference? Divine Shield. So would you rather have generic beef to survive hits and hit twice for four, or a special ability to survive hits and hit twice for three?
2. Numbers. The big numbers are "2", "3", 4", and "5" right now. Waddafux? Breaking it down - weenie aggro often runs a lot of 2-toughness minions that aren't subject to hero power removal and early mass removal like Fan of Knives, residual from Swipe, etc. 3 attack is characteristic of a lot of 2-drop minions. 4 attack is the generic attack of mid-range beef minions, best generic of those being Chillwind Yeti. 5 defense is the generic defense of mid-range beef minions, including Sen'jin Shieldmasta, Chillwind Yeti, yada yada.
So what you're really looking at with 3 attack on Silvermoon Guardian isn't just "one less attack". You're looking at dropping the functional attack on that minion and the defense as well, to 2-drop territory (look at all the 2-drops with 3 attack or 3 health.) As opposed to taking generic Chillwind Yeti, which has the maximum values for its drops in that sweet spot of 4 and 5. It's like you got a reallllly good 2-drop *at the cost of a 4-drop*, see?
Now yeah, when is Divine Shield better? When you're eating a Fireball, or up against Ironbark Protector or basically stuff that would put Chillwind Yeti a hundred feet under the ground - only *then*, if there's overkill, is Divine Shield better. But usually you can't hit whatever it is back very well with just 3 attack, and at 3 attack, you're not going to be too relevant to board control.
So *theoretically* mind - you can make up the difference in buffs. But your opponent will still be able to do a small poke to get rid of Divine Shield into overrun or regular removal. Moving on -
3. Weenies. You have cards that apply Divine Shield to other minions, but if you think about it, the ideal use of Divine Shield isn't on some small weenie that does some irrelevant poking. Ideally you cast it on something big and nasty that hits something else that's big and nasty. Then the other big nasty dies, and your big nasty lives unscratched. Now look at the deck. How many big nasties do you have? Not many.
4. 2-for-1 buffs &c. Generically, buffs are bad. Let's say you Mark of the Wild on Ragnaros the Firelord. Now you have a 10/10 that dishes out 8 damage a turn without taking any, awesome. Or . . . you have a single target for Hex.
So how does the OP deck get around that? You have a minion - any minion - survive. Then you buff it with attack buffs and Divine Shield possibly, attack with it, Divine Shield again. Or if a minion already has Divine Shield, buff, attack, reapply Divine Shield.
Now yeah I don't know if that's the concept behind the deck, but - something like that. But once you start putting in all that stuff, you have less room for Equality and Aldor Peacekeeper and Truesilver Champion and stuff that's considered "given" for a lot of Paladin builds. So who am I to say, start putting in this or that? What, do I say put in Sunfury Protector, Defender of Argus for imparted Taunt to Divine Shield minions? Or Windfury Harpy to get truly gigantic effects out of each buff? At some point, the deck just gets steered away from the original intent. So yeah maybe I might have some ideas whatever, but generally I'd say they're probably not awfully better than others.
If you see a post that you find objectionable, report it, it helps keep the forum clean. But be aware people are allowed a lot of latitude.
If you find my posts to be rude, objectionable, or whatever, well, I got tired of writing polite TL; DR (Too Long, Didn't Read) posts at crybaby whiners. So now I just make it short and nasty.
If you find that funny, well and good. If you find that sad, that's even better.
One of the best Paladin Aggro decks I've played in a while is the following:
If you don't have access to the legendaries, then you will be be able to find some replacements (+1 Argent Commander, +Shattered Clerics etc). You'll love the synergy of good early board control and King Mukla as well as the ape's synergy with Divine Favor.
You can tweak around Avenging Wrath instead of Consecration, but you will definitely need Equality. You can control the board for as long as it takes with Equality+Knife Juggler+Argent Protector and favorable trades. Also, it's the only way to get through beefy taunters.
As far as the aggro decks I played, the one in the link is by far the most enjoyable and solid Paladin Aggro. While the post above mine really hits bullseye as far as strategy is concerned, I will simply add that you need to make up a deck that is working on synergy rather than cards that everyone thinks are 'overpowered'.
If you go non-Control Paladin, the name of the game is board control and good trades. The one thing you need to keep in mind is that you should maintain a good momentum from turn 3 and on (unlike Zoo let's say, that starts strong and strives to maintain a solid board up to Doomguard). The way to deal with overwhelming boards is Equality, which is (in my opinion) one of the best cards in the game. Whatever you try from Paladin, you should keep Equality always on your list, because it does work wonders on both aggressive strategies and control-ish ones.
Wow.. Awesome thoughts! I mean, I don't entirely feel qualified to even say if I'm blazing any sweet new ground, seeing as this deck has as yet only taken me to Rank 17 which isn't anything to write home about... But it is plenty of things to think about as far as little tweaks!
Made a few adjustments to the deck based on some of the feedback here -- I'm definitely loving the Equality clears, which really helps on those occasions I get behind on board control. I'm not sure about Divine Favor, though... I don't usually find myself needing to use it very often, and I'm thinking I could swap it out for another minion, maybe a second Aldor Peacekeeper or Defender of Argus.
Further thoughts? I know Pally isn't a popular class in the meta right now, but I have a soft spot for them.. And dagnabbit I'll take this deck somewhere halfway decent eventually!