My guess is the people who are upset about it are people who play aggro, and they are already looked down upon.
But that card can go tall, it can go wide, it’s pretty broken, imo.
As soon as you try to play Dragon Druid, you will immediately see how strong Paladin is. It feels like such a polarizing match up and you will struggle to do anything. Paladin will take control of the board and never let it go and just chew you up. You have to get really lucky to beat it.
So it’s probably best to ride out the Paladin wave of busted until it gets fixed, otherwise you might not enjoy playing Dragon Druid.
3 Likes
How bold of you to assume it will be fixed.
lol
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You’re right.
As you might recall, after the VS report I said that Paladin needed heavy nerfs, and that Naga DH, Enrage Warrior, Rainbow Mage and Reno Shaman needed light nerfs. I then did my polarization analysis after that, and since Cleave Hunter and Dragon Druid have really bad polarization, I believe that the decks should be Tier 3 not Tier 2, and I think they both should have received light nerfs as well.
So far, with the exception of the Cleave Hunter nerf and a slap on the wrist in the form of the Order nerf, is basically following those guidelines above but only as far as Pure Paladin’s even and bad matchups are concerned. Enrage Warrior was/is Pure Paladin’s main predator and Rainbow Mage and Naga DH were even matchups. Notably, Paladin’s dominating matchup against Dragon Druid remains unnerfed and popular. Thus the net effect of the nerfs improves Pure Paladin’s matchup spread, especially against the top decks.
I realized that this would happen with the other nerfs I was recommending, which is why I emphasized that Pure Paladin needed to be nerfed heavily. This most recent patch was a buff to Pure Paladin by nerfing its predator and one of its peers.
In particular, nerfing the firebird to 3 Health was a very silly choice. I don’t particularly mind the target so much — very high drawn/mulligan winrate — but 3 Health is a horrible choice against Showdown, Prismatic Beam, infused Buffet Biggun, etc. It’s how a Paladin main would nerf the card.
Still, I need to at least give Team 5 a little bit of credit for not yet nerfing any deck that has absolutely no business being nerfed. The only problem is that they aren’t nerfing two of the classes that desperately need it.
2 Likes
Absolute balance 
don’t see any issues here, paladin just got nerfed. Surely, the play rates will adapt in the coming weeks, right?
Irony off.
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I am thoroughly amused to see that Paladin is still as op as it was before the patch and people is still asking for nerfs. I dropped standard shortly after the patch because this expansion’s standard feels just awfully bad to me; but just before I stopped I remember the threads saying that ‘The Paladin nerf was a big nerf’ or even that it was ‘huge’. It was just 1 day after the patch and people were pointing at some really early HSreplay data, as often happens, so some takes have aged like fine wine.
Anyways, yeah, the fact that paladin keeps getting the most absurd power-level in card design while classes like shaman get: ‘deal 1 more damage for each turn you have played an elemental’, and a bunch of laughably bad elementals that aren’t even good in arena is really puzzling.
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The problem with paladin is Divine Shields. When your minions can essentially absorb an attack, regardless of how strong that attack is and just keep swinging face, there is nothing whatsoever compelling you to do otherwise unless there is a taunt in the way, and paladin has some truly cheap ways of dealing with any taunt you put out there. Paladin card synergy is bonkers. This is why you see so many pure paladin decks and why you will always see Baroness included in it, just in case you happen to still be twitching after turn 6. They also get so many good 1 mana class minions that there is almost never a time that summoning two out of your deck for 3 mana and giving them taunt isn’t a great play. The paladin players defending it really need to stop. They know how busted that class is, or they wouldn’t be playing it as much as they do.
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I would love to see boogie down and buffet biggie hit somehow, revert order and hit those two! They have been the early game staple
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https://i.imgur.com/lk9Gc5X.png
7 months ago I made a thread pointing out how bonkers Boogie Down is and people threw tomatoes at me.
Now people are complaining about it despite the fact that pretty much all the same Paladin cards were in play at the time. We even see the same 1-drops we’ve had since MotLK.
Maybe I should start trading stocks.
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I actually think this card is perfectly balanced. On Curve it’s got the power that a legendary should have without being busted. Late game it is an utterly worthless card.
2 Likes
I don’t understand why everyone is crying about Paladin now… Paladin was weak for many years… Only Hunter, Priest, Druid, DH and Mage can be in the top in every meta or what? The chaos is complete since DK realeased… The game is dead because of the aggro too strong and fast… and because of 40 card decks are infinite… Deal with it… these developers have no idea what they are doing anymore… that thing is clear… Since these stupid OTK’s appeared I had to change to aggro too and I never wanted… but they managed to kill everything else. Tried to play some Highlander tough… The only thing we can hope in is the card rotation next year…
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I’ve been playing for around 4 years. In that time, my recollection (which can be wrong) is that paladin is, typically, on top. Despite that, the class generally gets a pass, and isn’t called out like, for example, mage or priest. I imagine players are finally becoming fed up with paladin being number one (at most ranks).
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Clueless.
Completely clueless.
Paladin has had more time at the top than any other class. You know which class is at the bottom with the least? Priest. This was already shown via stats in these forums.
You’re absolutely clueless as to what classes have and haven’t had the most decks at the top in HS history.
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Do you reckon? It’s probably close but I think Hunter has spent more time at top 1 then Paladin over the years.
Another post was made showing how often each class has been in a meta where it has a deck in tier 2 or above. Paladin was at the top with Hunter as well.
The numbers they had were in the 20+ range maybe even close to 40. Priest was like still single digits.
It wasn’t even close
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Blizzard has learned not to allow Priest, especially the “greedy,” vile, and unholy control versions be a top deck. Ever. It’s why they don’t usually give Priests cards that include massive mana reduction effects or real win-cons. I mean we all remember Light Shard priest right and how people cried about how unfair that was. I mean why would anyone want to be subjected to games that go 11 turns before the Priest wipes you out…better to just let the paladins and other aggro monkeys kill everyone by turn 5 or 6 (or even 3/4 if you’re a paladin heh).
Historically, Control Priest is usually a top tier deck immediately after rotation every single year due to the lack of late game lethality in a 4 set meta.
Buffet whatever that card and countess are probably the 2 cards that should get hit if they want to nerf things for paladin. Mabye prismatic too, paladin doesnt really need a boardclear like that. Buffet should either decrease the 3/1s to 2/1s or increase the infuse amount. The countess legendaries should cost 1 mana to play or change the little ticket things to 3 mana themselves.
But I still think paladin is ok and people just don’t adapt well at all. Frost DK does pretty decent right now against paladin and everything else. Boring as sin but honestly what decks are exciting these days
That’s the result of Blizzard doing this almost every set:
Hrm? What should we give priest?
Oh! I know! A powerful board clear and some copy cards for value!
Great idea! Ship it!
So when stuff does shift toward being more board centric play, priest is so horrifyingly overloaded on control tools that they make everyone go “see?! We need OTKs!”
When in reality, Blizzard just needs to almost full stop on giving priest removal. Give them literally ANYTHING proactive to do instead.
But yeah… I’d change the buff + AoE card in paladin to AoE for half of the buffed minion’s attack (rounded down).
Paladin shouldn’t have a board clear + tempo tool like that. It’s actually absurd.