Hearthpwn

Easiest way to make Patron Warrior still playable while eliminating the OTK aspect is changing the text of Warsong Commander to read like Southsea Deckhand - "Friendly minions with 3 or less attack have charge."  A full board  of Patrons can still be generated and your Frothing Berserker can be used the following turn if you have a way of protecting it.  It also doesn't immediately punish your opponent for playing minions before your combo turn.

There is an issue Mysterious Challenger and the reason is that it is a better version of Mad Scientist except it generally plays five mana worth of cards for free immediately versus a 2-3 mana deathrattle.  There is no opportunity to respond to that.  And while playing around the secrets is possible assuming you have the cards to do so and a board, it also thins out the deck  significantly.  Assuming MC is played on curve the Paladin will have drawn, and played a majority of 14-15 cards on turn 6 (50%) while the opponent will have only seen and maybe played 9-10 of their cards (33% - assuming no additional draw).  That is a pretty big advantage and this generally puts them at an additional advantage when it comes to top decks and the use of Divine Favor.  And that leads me to my next point.

Maybe the biggest problem with decks like Patron Warrior, Eboladin, and Mysterious Pally is card draw.  Card draw is what takes these decks from the gimmick category to top-tier.  Divine Favor and Battle Rage are cheap forms of card draw that make these decks consistently reach their win conditions.  I don't know the best way to change this or if there even is one.  Changing mana cost of these cards may be too drastic, but 1 additional mana cost could be an option.  Another option could be to limit each card to 3 drawn cards.  Neither of these cards will ever be changed, but that's all I could see being done to them if something were to happen.

And lastly it seems that Blizzard will keep introducing playable secrets for secret classes, but only have one neutral card to deal w/ secrets which isn't always that great to begin with.  They could buff Kezan Mystic to include an option similar to Flare - "Take control of a random enemy secret or destroy them all."  Otherwise they will need to introduce more cards that can help counter the introduction of more usable secrets if it seems that secret decks are getting out of control.

Quote from Brummbaer jump

Quote from Heisenberg1225 jump

I swear Blizzard make shaman spells assuming every player has a Wrath of Air Totem on the board the entire game

Yep ... Earth Shock with 2 dmg would be completely broken I guess, but you still feel sad when using it on a Haunted Creeper, Nerubian Egg, or Mad Scientist without the spell power. Coming back to the subject, most of this cards don't see constructed play mostly because they are overpriced, yes. I don't really know what was Blizzard's thought when creating Ancestral Knowledge. Though some people argue that being bad at drawing is in Shaman's nature and that giving them an efficient way to cycle through their deck would make them broken. True ? What do you guys think

I guess if you believe the power creep is real then an efficient way to cycle would be fair. Ancestral Knowledge isn't going to be bad late game even with overload, unfortunately its almost a dead card if you have it in hand in the first three or four turns.  You could even compare this card to Unstable Portal and see that the overload cost is too high creating a tempo imbalance.

Quote from Dragonhawk21 jump

6 mana 4/8 legendary, your overload cards cost 1 less, summon random totem every time you play overload card...looks good to me

That actually would be a pretty good card.  Sign me up!

Quote from Dustincr jump

I think instead of buffing current overload spells (which is hilariously unlikely) Blizzard should add some more overload synergy. Right now the only purpose overload serves is (small) temporary tempo gain at the expense of (large) tempo loss on your next turn. It's good in Mech Shaman when you can play double Crackle + Lavaburst but not much use outside of that.

I agree it is nearly 100% unlikely to ever happen as I stated towards the top of my post, but to keep releasing spells with such a high overload cost seems like the class will never move forward.  Either increased synergy is needed as we both seem to agree or the mechanic needs to change so the tempo gain equals the loss on the following turn.

Oddly enough overloaded minions seem to be costed correctly, so it is not as if Blizzard doesn't fully grasp the mechanic.

Edit:  Updated to include post-TGT discussion/analysis

Hello everyone.  With the release of the new spell for Shaman - Ancestral Knowledge, I wanted to discuss how pretty much every Shaman spell that contains overload is over costed on an overload level.  I get Blizzard doesn't want every class to be nearly identical, but giving other classes clearly better cards by comparison can make a class virtually unplayable which we have see in Shaman almost going back to before the release of GvG.  Overload should only cost the amount of tempo you are gaining and should not put you at a larger tempo disadvantage the following turn.

If memory serves, I believe I read that Blizzard values each overloaded crystal to be worth 1/2 an actual mana crystal, but the actual tempo loss of not being able to use overloaded mana crystals your next just makes that untrue.  And I also understand that Blizzard isn't in the business of buffing cards, but still feel that some sort of change might be necessary for the class to become playable from a truly competitive standpoint.  Think of it more as correcting a mistake.

The only card in my opinion that is costed correctly is Lightning Bolt.  Effectively, for 2 mana deal 3 damage.  Fits the mold just like Darkbomb, Frostbolt, Wrath.

Now let us get into the cards that are over costed by at least 1 overload crystal and compare them to other class cards.

Lava Burst - This card can be compared closest to Fireball for Mage.  You could almost argue that there should be no overload on this card at all.  For one less mana you are inflicting one less damage, but I'd be completely on board with this card having one overload crystal attached to it since it costs one less mana to play for nearly the same amount of damage.

Lightning Storm - Unfortunately this card is bad on a couple of fronts when compared and I do not have a clear solution.  The RNG factor does not justify the overload at all and because the damage is not guaranteed you can only truly count on 2-damage when playing it.  Compare this to Consecration you can see that Lightning Storm is not the best AoE card.  Consecration does the base damage of Lightning Storm while also dealing 2-damange to the face.  In my opinion there are two options to make this card better.  A) Remove overload and keep the RNG damage the same.  B) Remove 1 overload, but have it hit all enemies and not just minions.  

Crackle - This card needs a change, but only because of the RNG factor.  I would again just make it a choice card.  Deal 3 damage no overload or 4 - 6 with one overload.  I get rolling three damage only happens 25% of the time, but to incur the tempo loss of needing to use another card or minion to clear that one extra damage as well as overload on the next turn is a bit obnoxious.  By making it a choice card it keeps it on par with other 2 mana deal 3 damage cards and then compares to Imp-losion or Flamecannon in terms of RNG value/costing.

Forked Lightning - This is just a really bad Cleave and Cleave is hardly played which makes Forked Lightning never played except in arena possibly.  Remove one overload cost and maybe it finds some occasional use.

Feral Spirit - This one is difficult to truly judge.  I still think it has one more overload than it should but I understand that this card may not need a change.  My reasoning behind reducing overload by one is as follows.  Each Spirit Wolf has a base cost of 2 on its own totaling 4-mana.  Since you're only gaining 1-mana advantage the overload should only be 1.

Ancestral Knowledge - Talk about a tempo killer.  Yes, Shaman needs card draw, but they shouldn't get it at the cost of severely limiting their following turn.  Looking at Arcane Intellect and the decks its most commonly used in (Freeze and Flamewaker) the tempo loss is negligible or has synergies with other cards (Mana Wyrm/Flamewaker) where as this card for Shaman is just pure cycle.  I feel like this card is intended more for the mid-to-late game, but are you really not going to play this on turn two/three if the board is empty?  Again, I would remove one overload so the following turn isn't completely ruined. 

Elemental Destruction - I don't even know where to begin with this card.  It can be compared to so many, but I would argue that all the comparisons are better.  Because the only damage guaranteed is 4, the immediate comparison I would make it Flamestrike, except that it also deals 4 damage to your board.  So why does it cost 8 (when including overload)?  Speaking of cards that do damage to the entire board I then began to compare this to Hellfire.  Hellfire does one damage (guaranteed) less to the entire board, but costs just three with no overload.  Not sure how that makes sense.  And then I thought of Twisting Nether since both cards have an effective cost of 8-mana while affecting both sides of the board.  However, Twisting destroys the whole board, while Elemental Destruction only damages it.  That may work to your advantage some of the time, but if you fail to clear your opponents board and have to face 5-overload your next turn you may as well concede.  And that brings me to my final point.  This card needs to be combined with another card to see truly efficient use - Lava Shock.  Without this card,  rarely will you survive the game if used on its own.  If you've falling so far behind that you need to use this on turns 3, 4 or 5 (without Lava Shock) just to try to stabilize it often won't help.  Chances are you were dead already if it got to this point, but maybe this is the only play to give you a chance.  Unfortunately you are giving your opponent two turns of initiative due to the overload and may end up right back where you started.

And lastly I would like to talk about overload synergies...  They are practically non-existent!

Unbound Elemental - This card is just way to slow ever since Naxxramas and even before then wasn't that great of a card.  Often times this card never sees value since it is dealt with fairly easily before you can start buffing it or it is silenced making it an undervalued vanilla 3 drop (Spider Tank).  This card can also be compared to Flamewaker except Flamewaker has synergy with all Mage spells and not just select spells.  Flamewaker also generally see immediate value by dealing at least two random damage the turn it's played (assuming not played naked).  I do not know how I would improve this card with out completely ripping off Flamewaker or Imp Gang Boss.

Lava Shock - Another card that tries to offer some overload synergy, but unfortunately falls short.  First let us discuss the card itself.  Deal two damage plus an effect.  Does that should like any other card to you?  Frostbolt.  Except Frostbolt deals three damage plus has an effect that can be utilized any turn in freezing the target.  If Shaman does not have any overload, but needs to deal damage this just becomes a an expensive Holy Smite or Arcane Shot.  And in order for it to properly see overload removal value, you generally need to be 3+ charges of overload.  Maybe this card will see some (continued) play with Ancestral Knowledge and/or in a Shaman burn decks, but the setup just seems to slow for this card to be playable.  If I were to change it, make it deal three damage with the same effect and it at least functions as a plain two mana removal spell.

As you can see the synergy that currently exists with overload, carries no real benefit.  Either more cards need to be introduced to manipulate/benefit from overload or some changes might be needed.  Yes, the spells are generally efficient the turn they are played, but unfortunately they kill your tempo the following turn.  And in today's fast paced/tempo based meta, one turn of efficiency just isn't enough to recoup the tempo lost going forward.

The Grand Tournament did bring a small amount of excitement back to Shaman, but once opponents realized how to deal with/defend properly against totems the class is still considered bottom tier and that largely has to do with how badly overload sets shaman back in this fast paced and tempo driven meta.