I think Divine Shield would be a lot better if we didn’t have so much damage-based removal. We had plenty of DS cards last rotation, alongside the weapon and another minion that gave +5/+5 to a minion in hand whenever something lost DS. But it wasn’t that strong, because plenty of decks had means of removing minions without damaging them, either by direct killing, bouncing or silencing.
Right now, Rogue has two “destroy target minion” cards, priest and hunter have one conditional “destroy target minion”, there’s like three neutral silencing cards and the only bounce is an 8-cost hero. Oh, and Hex (4 cost) and Mass Polymorph (7!). Overwhelmingly, board removal is damage-based and that’s what makes DS so powerful (and annoying).
Also, I don’t get why so many neutral bots have DS. Maybe they could tone that down a bit.
I’m saying it is fine, because the win rate seems to support that it’s fine. Very strong, to be sure; top of the meta, in fact. But it’s not like it’s at 57% while the next competitor is at 52%.
If it loses durability when it reduces damage, it probably becomes too weak. Maybe it loses durability only when you swing? But then nobody would ever swing and it’s just a 0/5 weapon.
By the way, why does it have 5 durability anyway? Maybe for that one Boodsail Corsair Pirate (I think it’s only in Wild) with the Battle cry that removes 1 durability from your opponent’s weapon? And maybe you can manage to somehow play that guy 5 times?
But like I said, as annoyed as I am with Divine Shield, that’s not a good reason for a nerf. It was a bad reason for Quest Hunter, and for Quest Mage before it, and for Quest Rogue way back in Ungoro. And it’ll be a bad reason when they nerf the next deck that the mob mentality drives into the ground.
Divine shield stat line is simply not weighted properly. It’s guaranteed to survive 2 hits, so it should be worth more than a stat line given for health or taunt.
And like someone above said, removal is heavily based on damage and not hard removal. We need more hard removal. I think the new Warlock minion that steals health is a great example of what the game needs more of.
Grr. You don’t get it. I’m basically agreeing with you. I don’t want Paladin butchered. My point was that losing to them was no more satisfying than losing to Hunter, so Hunter should have been left alone on the basis that it wasn’t objectively a problem.
Btw when I said ‘the weapon’ I meant the handbuff one. That or the hero card (of which of course the immoval object is part of)
I never really was bothered by DS as an effect on a card that they paid for through cost or low end stats, usually health. I thought the mech design was very good and playable but had counters.
All that said Mech Paladin has one card that is so OP and needs to be addressed. Bubblebot giving all the mechs DS and taunt is just utterly ridiculous. Four mana to hand out all of those effects at once seems absurd.
Questline Hunter was specifically nerfed for QQ reasons.
We’re just limited to Murloc Warlock (and that’s only now with the buffs) and Mech Mage as Paladin counters.
And now people want Mech Mage nerfed!!!
We should just nerf everything that beats Paladin until it’s 70% against everything except Paladin! Give me a break!
What I don’t find fun is the ridiculous powercreep on the Divine Shield mechanic. It’s driving stupid gameplay with too little choices because of how overwhelmingly strong it is.
No, not really. Mech Paladin hard countered Quest Hunter. Handbuff Paladin was favored as well. I don’t recall the Holy Paladin matchup; I think QH was favored, but I’m not sure.
This is a huge part of the reason why Dragonbane Shot didn’t need to be nerfed at all. The nerfing of Naga DH was already going to create an increase in bad matchups for Quest Hunter as Mech Paladin was no longer scared of the Naga DH hard counter.
This! This is why I like the new Warlock minion. I don’t think people realize why that interaction is so good. It’s similar to the Priest spell that siphons 1 health from all minions. Divine Shield doesn’t mean squat then.
Multiple season legend player here, and have played hearthstone since launch. The current Paladin deck is at over a 65% wr across multiple ranks. This deck indeed takes 0 skill to play, and is more about playing overpowered card after overpowered card with 0 attempt at combos. To be able to drop 2 8/6 divine shields on turn 5 is a little too extreme, and almost no class can deal with it. The paladin hero card cariel is broken unless u have a destroy weapon in your hand, gg. Nerf paladin, so i can start to play other decks besides paladin 90% of my games.
Reading this thread, it sounds like everybody should be running two of that “silence all minions” thing just to deal with those pesky paladins. Plus viper for cariel.
But I’m guessing people don’t do that. Or maybe they should ask for blood knight to make a return.
As for divine shield being fun…it’s as fun as taunt or rush or lifesteal etc. It’s just another keyword.
Ask a SMORC player how fun they think taunt is ( ::sings SMORC song:: )
Burn/aggro decks that rely on minion damage probably don’t like lifesteal or rush either.
Speaking of ds, rush, taunt, lifesteal… wasn’t there a certain mech back in the day that the community just loved that had all those things?
UNITY. PRECISION. PERFECTION.
Ah, so maybe that’s it. Divine shield alone isn’t fun. It’s fun when it has one of those other keywords. Maybe all at once.
Ok, next patch, all paladin divine shield cards should also include rush, taunt, and lifesteal. Oh and magnetic. We’ve got mechs this expansion to work with them.
This will surely make paladins the most fun class ever!
So I am going to start my deck with 26 cards, so I throw the towel every time I meet a Curse Warlock, Control Warrior, Thief Rogue, and everything else?
Do you fail to understand that a tech card must increase your win rate so much in specific matchups that it makes up for the decrease in your other matchups just to break even? Or that specific tech is so common that it doesn’t matter because everyone else is playing with a gimped deck with 4 tech cards.
So if I by myself choose to hard tech like that, I will lose more than if I don’t until such time when Paladin and Murloc Warlocks have full lockdown of the meta.