Hearthpwn

Quote from Pythonproduct >>

Quote from TheSpunYarn >>

I think it's interesting that everybody's perspective on Divine Favor is that it punishes the player with the big hand.  The way I see it, it doesn't "punish" anybody, it rewards and incentivizes its player to dump their own hand, it really doesn't matter how huge the opponent's hand is at that stage.  Divine Favor from 0 cards in hand to 4 is still incredible.  2 being the bare minimum of good for the cost.

I guess that's just a perspective thing.

 It definitely punishes you for being careful with your resources. The counterplay is to literally play as many cards as possible each turn without  rhyme or reason. It doesn't incentivize the opponent to dump their hand (as the opponent doesn't get any positive effect for dumping their hand), it punishes the opponent for not dumping their hand  

 I can respect that you see it that way - but it feels like you're only looking at this from the perspective of the control/combo player vs the aggressive Paladin.  I'll try and explain where I'm coming from better.

If you're in a position where you're able to play conservatively with the cards in your hand, and your opponent is casting Divine Favor and drawing between 4 - 6 cards, you started in an advantaged situation.  Because you're playing conservatively, you must have some board wipe in hand that can deal with not just what they currently have, but what they could potentially have.  They're on the back foot because they're low on resources, but they level that with Divine Favor.
You haven't lost any advantage, and Divine Favor doesn't make a direct impact on your board or hand, anything like that happening requires more mana invested in the Paladin's turn using the resources they've gained.  If they invest more mana into developing their board with the cards they just drew, you were already prepared for that happening because you've got that big meaty hand, right?  Unless you're specifically a Druid, that seems like you're in about the same position as you were in before.  And even though your opponent has more cards than before, you're still the one holding the answers to their aggression, that's what control is about.

In the Paladin's position, they see that they're up against somebody determined to keep cards in hand and not use a lot of their resources.  They've got Divine Favor and a hand of cards that are all proactive - that's the point of their deck, developing threats on board to kill your opponent.  Divine Favor frees them to play more aggressively with the resources they have because the punish of a board wipe is less, well, punishing.  Now it would still be silly to hand dump > Favor > hand dump pt. 2, but they're still more free to play proactively, incentivized to do so because they have a possible +6 in hand.

The control player isn't punished because they're not in a strictly worse position on board, they're the ones with the answers (hypothetically speaking), and the aggro Paladin player isn't disincentivized from playing into removal because they have a way to recover from that loss, motivating them to play towards their own game plan.

I guess tldr; I don't see Divine Favor as a punish because nothing is really happening to you when it gets played against you.  An aggressive deck spending 50% (give or take) of their mana to draw cards when they were in a disadvantaged state (implied to be disadvantaged because the control player was able to keep cards in hand in the first place) doesn't really threaten you in the short term any more than what they already had going on.  Unless they drop a Hand of A'dal or Blessing of Kings onto their Crabrider - that'd be pretty scary.

I can't believe people are actually implying that Quick Shot is problematic in any way.  A card that is a cantrip at best and only when their hand is literally empty.  I'm on the side of "give everybody lots of card draw" - because card draw is an important mechanic of any card game and everybody should have access to it.  And I don't wanna hear any "whatabouts", card games are games where you play cards, and you need cards in hand to play.

Now I'd like to see every class have card draw in its own unique way, which is tricky conceptually but not impossible.
I think it's interesting that everybody's perspective on Divine Favor is that it punishes the player with the big hand.  The way I see it, it doesn't "punish" anybody, it rewards and incentivizes its player to dump their own hand, it really doesn't matter how huge the opponent's hand is at that stage.  Divine Favor from 0 cards in hand to 4 is still incredible.  2 being the bare minimum of good for the cost.

I guess that's just a perspective thing.