I want to bring attention to Paladin, it’s too strong for the current meta.
Here is the problem:
It’s incredibly easy to activate Flight Maneuvers by turn 4 and follow up with Nozdormu.
When the card recombines the payoff is massive:
This creates a huge swing turn that is extremely difficult to answer that early in the game.
Typical scenario:
By turn 3, Paladin already has a board of small minions. On turn 4, Flight Maneuvers is fully activated and god forbid they have Nozdormu as follow up.
At this stage of the game, most classes simply don’t have the tools to deal with:
Why this is a problem:
I’d be interested to hear if others are experiencing the same issue on ladder. Right now, it feels like every other game is against Paladin, and Flight Maneuvers is at the center of that frustration.
9 Likes
It’s disgustingly broken, I see no counterplay in the present meta
Changed my mind relative to yesterday after having lost every single game against it today
4 Likes
It’s crusader aura reboot
It’s exageration.
Take the +1/1 buff and the card is ok. Blizzard miscalculated that one but It is not that big of a margin.
Mass Divine shield make the Minions stick more into the board so buff their attack is exageration because It is punishing people for not being able to remove that is reforced to be extra sticky.
Not a game breaking exageration but one worth correction.
Not just mass DS, but reinforced DS thanks to Toreth
I say flight is more flash sale than crusader aura. Crusader doesn’t just want pally to have board, but that having the board ready to attack (or they won’t get a buff). Flash sale works even if you’re buffing minions that are still waiting for next turn to move.
But in some ways flight is worse than flash sale since you need to get it to merge first to be worthwhile. Plus unlike flash sale or crusader you broadcast to your opponent when you have your shattered card, and when you merge it.
It’s no coincidence that the deck that abuses flight the most is very similar to the token deck that used flash sale. They run low drops to flood pressure while trying to merge their card.
…and just like flash sale, the counter to the deck (not the flight card itself) is to constantly contain the paladin board. It’s harder right now since it’s new rotation. But you can say the same of other aggressive snowball-y decks from herald shaman to dragon/herald warrior to no hand hunter.
I suspect they won’t touch it and just let paladins have fun with it, until future minisets/expansions introduce ways for people to either contest early board with their own minions and/or give people some cheap clears back.
1 Like
And a 8 manas minion played in turn 6 and get 20 manas of spells out of the thin air.
Paladin is extremely OP, at least the meta have other tyrants like warrior, but is the worst meta for some classes like rogue.
2 Likes
Rogue? The “30% of the meta with a 50ish winrate in the top 1k legend, at least according to hsguru” rogue? That’s the worst, in your estimation? Huh.
Well, if it’s bad, then it must at least be fun, since it’s getting played so much.
3 Likes
Funny thing is I am a Paladin player but my deck is not based on this Shatter card at all.. or Nozdormu Bronze because I can’t trust only in these 2 cards. I always like to build decks which can win in multipple ways not just one. But I understand the frustration.. it is really a problem now because it became too popular by using low mana cost cards for quick merge. But without these.. the card would be useless.
2 Likes
You absolutely should because you can tutor it with the 1 mana spell “draw 1 spell that started in your deck and one that didn’t”
that’s 4 cards to mulligan for or draw before you can play it and that’s hell of a consistency in today’s meta
I’ve never seen a paladin not draw it until 4. It’s around ~ 80+% chance to get it
In fact, ~40% of the time you’ll play it twice by turn 5
1 Like
Its just broken and it really need a nerf. This card alone carries Pally deck.
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Yes, I know that. Believe it or not I already created a deck with this before the meta.. but I didn’t enjoy it.. I just don’t like aggro decks, never did.. But thanks anyway.
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Blizzard doesn’t care as their top people only play Paly.
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According to HSGuru, rank D4-1 appears to have 4 top tier decks: Aggro Pally, Aura (End of Turn) Pally, No Minion DH, and Dragon Warrior. They’re all in the 56%-58% win rate range. Then there’s a bit of a drop off to about 6 decks in the 52%-54% range. So while Aggro Pally isn’t a single outlier, it’s one of 4 decks that could stand to be reviewed for possible balance adjustments.
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If that’s the case, I think people are crying unnecessarily. 2% difference between that deck and the next tier down that has like six different decks in it…..I already didn’t think it was THAT strong… I think people just don’t like the divine shield Mechanic. But divine shield has been largely absent from the game and this is the first time it’s actually relevant in YEARS. I do think noz could maybe only give 2+2+ and it would still be fine that being said… or honestly even 1+1+
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Divine Shield would be ok IF you also didn’t have a card that made a person need 3 hits to down divine shield. Problem isn’t the mechanic its 1 card.
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Possibly true. However, I argue that the problem is actually much bigger than both of these things. It’s the algorithm. People can say what they want, but I’ve noticed that I only play certain decks after I build a different archetype… Ive noticed I will see the same deck like 30 to 40% of the time while I’m playing a control deck and then if I switched to a different kind of deck, I will virtually never see those decks EVER again and only see other decks that I’ve never seen before that just so happened provide counters to my new deck. Even if that deck happens to be incredibly popular, like discard warlock in wild You will suddenly never see it again as soon as you build a hyper optimized deck that would destroy it with no effort (and I’ve played thousands of matches. I’m not drawing on ignorance here. And Ive actually been an actual deck maker the entire time, which is something that a lot of people who are disagreeing with this narrative cannot say. If all you do is copy decks you won’t notice this so much..) The issue really isn’t whether or not they’re doing this like a lot of people think, they are certainly doing it. The thing is, they have protection under the guise of “competitive matchmaking “… or, creating a “fair “experience for all people. The issue outside of that is that it undercuts the reward people should be getting for trying to counter the Meta or creating their own powerful decks. It undercuts any and all rewards for creative expression and capability… AND it just so happens to help line their pockets when numbers are close to even, regardless of how they obtain that situation because either extreme of losing too much or winning too much leads to a loss of interest in playing the game. People who say where’s the proof of that must have absolutely no psychological understanding, people have been the same for thousands of years and it doesn’t take a genius to figure these things out and people already have and provided plenty of evidence for typical human behavior. You just have to actually be able to use critical thinking which it seems is becoming less and less available as a commodity in our societies. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be certain algorithmic tendencies to curb decks here and there, but I think that they are too extreme. Curbing a deck to make sure it’s not more powerful than like 65% win rate is reasonable and the same goes perhaps for curbing it if it goes below like 35…. This is when is the gets complicated however Because then how does the system differentiate between somebody who’s actually built a bad deck or somebody who’s just having a string of terrible matchups due to random chance? The only way to begin to sort that out is to scan the decks… But trying to force a 50-50 is just toxic and spirit crushing when you’re constantly trying to optimize a deck and it doesn’t matter because the algorithm will counter you no matter how good you make your deck. That’s the deep problem behind almost all dissatisfaction with this game.. aside from lazy balancing. They are over relying on the algorithm so that they do not have to actually make the game fair by BALANCING CORRECTLY. It’s laziness and inauthenticity validated as “efficiency”. Again, all of this is under the idea of MMR. Problem is MMR doesn’t work in card games the same it does in chess. Because we’re calculating volatile possibilities, probabilities and therefore different and almost impossible to measure in such an environment “skill” expression, unless they are in fact scanning decks and gathering immense amounts of information… even then it’s not being used properly. They largely just need to completely leave their MMR system out of this and let it actually be random. But they’re too worried new people might not stay in their game and give them money so. In a sense theyre trying to fix the RNG problem, but it’s actually making it feel worse.
But at least you know as soon as you see a paladin you’re literally playing the most mindless clowns in the community, desperate for a win. And still utterly dependent on rng for their welfare check. That’s why you see so many every day. Good Rope candidates. Just played some low iq slob playing aura pally, game was played for him by passive value and utterly amazing legendary RNG like every low iq aura pally I’ve ever seen (almost like a guarantee on draws statistically).
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Those Divine Shields are really doing more heavy work than ever these days. You force the opponent to have to hit each minion twice to kill it, and there are so few spells now that have a multi-hit effect or help you kill off the board easily, so if you can’t prevent Paladin from keeping minions on the board, you will most likely lose. Let’s just hope that Blizzard tones down some of these cards and adds more board clears in the next mini-set, because right now, if you see a Paladin, you know you’re going to have a very fun match up. Said no one ever.
4 Likes