Hearthpwn

I actually agree with Jonesy - it's confusing.

Keep in mind I'm probably biased because my line of thought whenever I see a Murloc in Paladin is GET THE MURLOCS AWAY FROM MY PALADIN BLIZZARD ever since Blizz started actually pushing Murlocs in Paladin.

And okay, they could actually push out a few more Murloc cards and that "could" make this good because obviously in an ideal world, and leaving aside my hatred of Murlocs in Paladin with gritted teeth, the card is very obviously insane. 8 mana for Recruit 7 cards. Assuming the average Murloc is about 2 mana's worth you break even if you pull 4. If you're actually going to put this in your deck you're going to put quite a few Murlocs in there, it'll probably pull 6+ Murlocs reliably, I'd reckon, at least the first time you play it. Obviously there are problems like the complete lack of midgame options that are Murloc, meaning it is pretty draw reliant (e.g. if you end up drawing a bunch of low value Murlocs in the midgame, could fall behind too quickly, and coming back from a losing board is one thing Paladin traditionally struggles at due to bad removal options).

So far though whether it'll actually be a thing is an unknown quantity. I can think of two Murloc cards they've printed so far that could be used in Paladin - Fishflinger and (new) Finley (edit: forgot about Murmy); both of them are okay cards in a vacuum, Fishflinger is kinda eh and Finley...is not really something you want to put in a deck that runs this card, I'd imagine, since I doubt there are enough (good) Murlocs in Standard to make this card work.

The second option people have been speculating is running a bunch of Murlocs, this, and then trying to activate the Shirvallah Holy Wrath combo.  Personally I doubt that works, because you're putting a bunch of very low value (even the good Murlocs) cards in a deck and hoping a little too much to luck into Tip the Scales on 8 - in other words, Yes Paladin would have been consistent if this worked; difference between this and CtA lies in the fact that Paladin combo/control decks that ran CtA in the past ran it with a bunch of defensive minions - Doomsayers, 1/1 Divine Shield Taunts, you could stretch it and say Wild Pyro was defensive if you're thinking about Equality/Shrink Ray combos and that allowed you to stall out the game or get ahead on tempo whereas with this...when's the last time you've seen a Murloc that has Taunt? Never, so far as I know. Now they "could" break that trend, go crazy and start printing Murlocs with Taunt and Divine Shield or Murlocs that passively damage your opponents' non-Murloc minions or something, but I doubt it. And if you don't have to defend and can reliably out-tempo opposing decks with this single card and stuffing a bunch of Murlocs in your deck then I don't really see why you'd actually be using the OTK in the first place because you'd be a more successful deck without the OTK components then.

That aside, can I just say how the cards printed by Blizzard have been all over the place for Paladin for a good while now? The themes they push for Pala are really kinda bad imo.

Hmm, I thought I'd said this here already, but apparently not. Here goes.

So people are rating this card on the basis of this being a 4 mana 8/8 Taunt, which it asolutely can be. However, even with Thekal and Crystallizers, I have issues with this card. It is obviously a decent card. By no means can you call it an actively bad card. I just think you can't call it a 4 mana 8/8 and leave it there; it has a condition which will certainly be met over the course of the game, on average. The issue is when that condition is met. If it isn't met early enough it doesn't do enough to pressure other decks like Mountain Giants and Twilight Drakes do for Evenlock. If tossed out late, it becomes dubious as to what the merits of the card are; unless you can chain a constant swing of tempo cards (which you can't if you run this card since you need to put a decent amount of healing in there to get this to activate and most healing is not good tempo) big piles of stats that don't much more than big piles of stats don't often see inclusion in decks that tend to look late game. The reason Evenlock includes those is because it knows it can consistently cheat them out in early turns. This can't. It would take realistically t6~7ish at the earliest before you could drop this. That's not very early.

Also for people that are talking about Cube - I would bet real money that Cube would shuffle 1 buffed Prelate into your deck, but that the revived Prelates that pop out when you pop Cube would not keep any enchantments (consistent with how Cube works with other minions). Cube combos will not work.

Ah now this is more the power level of the Paladin cards I'm used to.

Yes, it's trash.

For the record there's a 4 mana 3/3 weapon (in Rogue) that sees no play. When that doesn't see play, it seems reasonable to guess the weapon by itself isn't good enough on its own (even if different classes and so forth). Then you add one mana on it and the Overkill keyword, but the Overkill keyword isn't going to trigger consistently enough for this to nearly make up for its overcostedness. Very doubtful.

People who are shouting Equality and Shrink Ray haven't played Paladin. The more reasonable thing is to think about how often this would proc ina regular combat situation.

Quote from CasmX >>

Unfortunately I have to rate this as bad. But let's face it, historically, paladins are known for getting some of the most powerful legendary card ever printed. Having an expansion give them a bad one for a change is a nice change of pace.

 The only straight up powerful class legendary for Paladin in this standard rotation was Tarim. This is a misconception. The time Paladins had really good legendaries consecutively was probably when Burnbristle and Light Rag were in the same rotation.

Shirvallah seems boring to me but that's another topic; it feels like a Light Rag replacement that could see play depending on how easy it would be to reduce its cost to something playable. 

Quote from HAL9000 >>

even if a card sees zero play in the upcoming meta, when the card is strong in a vacuum, its highly likely it will see play after rotations/next expansion/wild.

 

His predictions are for the next expansion in Standard play. That is quite clear from watching the reviews.

And you know what? There are many cards which seem good in a vacuum that do NOT see competitive play. Like Dragon Paladin synergy cards like the 3 mana 2 3 summon two whelps. Or the Dragon Consort. Or (currently) Cathedral Gargoyle. Or heck, Galvadon is a good minion and a good mid~to late game game threat if the condition was easier. It so happens that the conditions are not, because of the meta. Emeriss is great. Doesn't see play, because the meta's too fast for it and Hunter doesn't have the draw to get it to work consistently. And so on.

It has been said already - but again.

A lot of the cards that he said were 1 star were correct. They did not see competitive play in the expansion they were released in. People laugh at his DK Guldan rating, but during KoFT DK Guldan was hot garbage for the simple reason there were no good demons to play. Same with Defile. Yeah he was wrong on Cubelock and Creeper, but he also called Shudder right.

It's not his fault that he rates a card low, Blizz makes a bunch of balance patches and releases new expansions in the future which propel it to t1, and then his predictions made then aren't accurate anymore - he made the best predictions he could have at that time.

People laugh at "meta"/"crystal ball" ratings, while failing to realize that saying something like "BUT DEFILE WAS OBVIOUSLY A BROKEN CARD" is, in fact, more "crystal ball" than what you are laughing at - because it presumes Blizz will print support for said cards which makes them good, and what exactly is your basis for that?

"Trump goes by the previous meta" is also a dumb critique. In his reviews he categorically points out he tried theorycrafting such and such a deck, but doesn't see the viability of it when compared to a deck currently in meta (which is a valid criticism of a deck. If another deck does basically what you want to do but better, there is no reason to run such a deck). Now, whether he is good at said prediction? That can be up to debate, but that is a different critique entirely, not to mention that kind of prediction is very difficult.

Even people on these forums rate cards similarly. For instance, people poo poo every Healadin synergy card, but with the right support, Healadin could be a viable deck. Does that stop you from calling Pearl Spellstone or Blackguard trash? No it doesn't. 

So thought about this a bit more, changed my vote from Playable to Bad.

There are a few ways to use Prismatic Lens.

You "could" plop this in a normal deck and hope for the best, that a good card isn't ruined. However 4 mana draw 2 isn't great although Paladin does lack draw; also the risk is just too high, so it won't see play this way.

So you start cheating.

1. You put this in a deck with cheap cards. Cheap minions, cheap spells (e.g. BoK). Whatever comes out is still usable. Main problem: Divine Favor is just better.

So you start cheating some more.

2. You put this in a deck with cheap spells, and expensive minions. Problem: the deck becomes wildly inconsistent. You are also hoping that aggro pretty much does not exist; because if you meet one, you ded. You ded ded. Even in the optimistic scenario that you draw this early, doubtful you can fend off aggro til t4 at the earliest with Paladin cards. People seem to think this might work, but it won't. Noble Sac, Humility, Lost in the Jungle; apart from these you can't do shit. These are really bad defensive options. And unlike Priest, Paladin can't cheaply re-use minions (Resurrect).

3. You put this in a deck with cheap minions, and high cost spells. This is more realistic. However, consider the following:

A. Far Sight is widely seen as a comparable analogy to this card. Far Sight has also never seen play in aggro. It has only seen play in combo. (with the caveat that Far Sight would have the risk of pulling something 1 mana and not get a discount while this tutors a high cost spell from your deck. Ultimately though Midrange has never run this either.)

B. The card costs 4. You are paying 4 whole mana upfront with this card, to draw a card. That's expensive, for aggro. You never see aggro Paladins playing Divine Favor early. You will lose tempo, and you will lose. This card costs 4 upfront. People think "play this t4, t5 Dinosize gg" when if you play this t4 you have effectively skipped t4 and given the opponent a huge break to stabilize. You can rarely afford to do this. Most likely the card will be kept in the hand until you start floating mana as an aggro deck like t7~8ish. By then a Dinosize play isn't that great.

Quote from fikart >>

Control paladin hype is real if your opponent doesn't have 13 damage or silence  you can magnetize this and have a huge threat on the board

 A big minion doesn't enable Control Paladin.

Personally I kinda struggle to see where this fits

It seems a little too heavy in aggro considering you have to put another card into it to enable it, and control won't exist this expansion. Maybe some kind of MR Mech deck...?

Why? Why fucking waste an iconic character? Even with Steed this might not have seen play. What are those stats for a fucking 7 mana? Holy shit. I was excited as fuck when i saw Lady Liadrin would be a card,then when I saw the effect I was so underwhelmed. Come on..

 Paladin gets no rest. Even if there is a good buff in this expansion, would you really run a 4/6 for seven mana? Especially because you have to spend the Mana for the buff again.
It has to be a hell of a buff for this to be worth it. And even then it's in no way an autoinclude. 

(Maybe they still want to see us suffer, after what we done to the meta with odd-paladin.:D)

A new friend for Diving Gryphon.

And Dragons, don't forget dragons, that buff murlocs, for some reason.

Dear god, why they just keep insisting on murloc paladin? They don't read any comments of the latest expansions?

I mean it's pretty good, but it just flavorless.

Quote from rabii99 >>

Calling it right now, Northshire Cleric and Divine Spirit are going to the HOF, plus either mindgames or shadowform.

 I would be astounded if cleric got HoF'd, because that's been part of a playstyle the dev team has leaned in to. Their reasoning for Velen going away was he was part of a playstyle they had no intention of helping. Assuming they're doing rarity swap for same rarity, we need to lose a legendary (we know Velen is going), an epic, 2 rares, and 2 base set cards. 

I'm banking my money being shadowform being the epic we lose, as it's again a playstyle they don't really like, kind of goes against priest theme, and takes up a valuable slot. The new AOE is much better for that position. The basic cards will probably be divine spirit (legitimately surprised this is the hit though, and not inner fire. But no new common cards, so I think it's a safe bet that it survives the rotation), and probably mind control. A card just far too swingy for it's own good. It's so expensive that it can't be run, but if a meta ever becomes too slow, it ends up becoming a dominant issue. As for the rares...erm, lightwell I guess, as it does something that is far too unreliable and low impact, and priest can do it already so consistently that it's just taking up a slot. The other rare though...I am not confident in making a call. I guess holy fire or mass dispel, but I again am unsure. Neither have been especially useful for the class though.

I feel the exact same way. It's pretty frustrating to get teased every expansion and then being let down every single time

Legit i only play paladin and have been for the past expansions, i can only afford so much and put most of my resources toward one class and thats paladin. I guess i chose poorly, seems like to me every other class gets really well stated minions and spells whilst paladin is forced to deal with complete and utter dogshit. They made heal and dragon archtype but never supported it afterwards, now paladin is getting murlocs, beasts, mechs in one expansion. I love how the class identity is "divine shield" which is bullshit to me. Year of the Dragon? Where are the dragons? You gave paladin a quest that has to do with a brand new mechanic?? Paladin just doesn't make sense anymore. Its like all over the place now. I'm very dissapointed that i have to wait for next next expansion just to hope paladin gets DECENT cards so i can play this game again.

I just don't get it. There is no murloc synergy in Paladin - (standard) - right now.

Dragon Paladin could use some love. None.

The Quest for Paladin requires reborn minions. We have seen none so far. So WTF is this?

Finally, it appeared like we'd have some aggro/beast Paladin game this expansion with the first three cards they revealed. 

I'm so confused, and don't see anything working here.

So, if I understood him correctly he's saying: Testing is done AFTER the final design is complete and the expansion is ready to go, and even IF someone notices something broken during testing, they release it anyway.

That... explains a lot.