Priest: no card draw, immense board clears
Mage: good card draw and good board clears
Warrior: good card draw and good board clears
Druid: great card draw, limited board clears
Shaman: decent card draw, good board clears
Warlock: great card draw, great board clears
Rogue: immense card draw, limited board clears
Hunter: decent card draw, limited board clears
Demon Hunter: great card draw, good board clears
Paladin: limited card draw, limited board clears
Additionally, it’s the only class that also lacks single target removal AND ping damage. Don’t bother checking, the rest of the classes have one or the other. These traits are vital in modern Hearthstone.
This expansion has been great for papering over the cracks at ranks below legend, but there’s no doubt that Paladin is the class that most needs an identity fix, maybe even moreso than Shaman.
Yeah, all of their basic and classic set is archaic and super outdated.
The fact that 3+ expacs worth of cards are unplayable and slow definitely doesn’t help.
Devs don’t seem to care or they just turn a blind eye to the fact that Paladin sucks right now.
Sure it has a few highrolls but every class has multiple highrolls…paladin having 1 or 2 really doesn’t matter.
Equality being 4 mana is absurd. We get a unreliable board clear using two cards at 7+ mana (on average).
That’s using 2 cards, assuming we have both in hand at the right time and it actually does something amazing for us (rarely).
Card draw is very low for Paladin.
We’re often left grasping for straws if the opponent has an answer for our board (very common, devs passed out hard removal like candy to every other class for dirt cheap).
I’m astounded the devs haven’t noticed or addressed the rediculous state that Paladin is and HAS BEEN in for years now.
Then again, it takes them forever to do anything about urgent matters so ‘non-urgent’ matters takes years.
Paladin just needs board sweeping mana reductions to all of their overcosted cards to compensate for taking away Divine Favor.
You can even have the ‘Blessing of Authority’…just give me back the card draw and affordable cards.
I don’t care about the stats or the buffs…I much prefer reliability and not getting out-tempo’d by every class in the game at every turn.
Even the occasional lucky braggart or abbess can be easily countered by dirt cheap removal spells while the opponent sacrifices NOTHING.
It’s incredible how people really think Paladin is strong…it’s not.
It’s very weak, if you were legend you would see how poorly it performs against most other classes.
Even the hero power is now the worst in the game, some classes have infinite resource generation.
Every little thing adds up to making Paladin’s cards just suck.
They’re sooo slow. They do nothing the turn they’re played and if you are in a spot to throw down some big threat…it’s almost guaranteed to get removed due to all the ‘rng’ in the game.
Even Puzzle box has 10 chances to deal with it.
Paladin needs a lot of love. Their card set sucks and over half is useless and doesn’t see play.
That’s pretty much a fact.
Just remake the class and the cards already…devs, you have butchered everything about the Paladin class.
Literally.
Am I exaggerating? No.
You took so much away from Paladin and compensated NOTHING.
Just gave us hot garbage for 3+ expacs. Pretty infuriating by now and it’s getting old.
You literally just throw down cards on curve, hope they don’t get removed in 1 turn, and hope you have a card to play next turn.
It’s very simplified, straightforward, and fair.
Also quite boring and weak relative to the other classes.
See how many players brought Paladin to GM?
Out of all of them, 0.
0 brought Paladin because it’s a liability.
The best player’s in the world know that the class sucks in tournament, in ladder, and feels awful to play.
You won’t convince me otherwise.
It has 1 playable archetype (Libram) and everyone knows how to play against it by now.
That should be a real concern. That a class has only ONE deck to play…and it’s not very good.
You don’t really have to wonder what kind of deck the Paladin is playing, it’s always a Libram Paladin of some variation (I think there’s 1 semi-reliable list?)…
Even Shaman (as weak as it is) is more fun to play and has way more flexibility with several paths to take.
Are you one of those “winrate numbers and aggregate data don’t matter” types? Because if so, just tell me now so I can save some time.
Paladin falls off somewhat in high legend, yes, because it’s a good deck without being absurdly OP. That doesn’t make it bad, and it’s still better than some others. It can be fairly linear which is why players at the top end don’t play it endlessly, but there’s absolutely no reason to trash it the way you are right now.
Darkcloud is incredibly biased towards the paladin class. I mean it’s his main so who isn’t. Paladin is also my main and I already know I’m probably biased. So when I say that paladin still suffers from design issues, even though it’s the best performing class, I mean it.
Paladin is the same position priest was in before it’s rework. A fundamentally flawed class that is propped up in winrate by intentionally overturned cards as a bandaid solution. This isn’t sustainable and they will have to fix this eventually. Paladin is the value and tempo class, but it’s always given value and almost no tempo.
This expansion it was given immense value with very strong buffs, braggart, and mechanic specialization through dual class cards. This has made the class top of the line in general, because it’s able to incrementall build value throughout the entire match regardless of the skill level of the player.
What should happen is that as a paladin, your board is the only way to win. You should have to sacrifice value for tempo and vice versa when the situation requires it. Such as going wide in preparation for massive board buffs. Or going tall with buffs on one target. These are both strategies with weaknesses. Right now blizzard has given paladin a hybrid of going both, with no real identifiable weakness.
So yes the class is in a great place, Is it in a great design place? No.
I like how OP says Pallys have no draw and board clear when they have a 1/4 weapon AND a spell that reduce ALL enemy minions to 1 hp that both combo with consecration and then you still have pyromancer. Then you have a BUFF DECK which multiplies all buff cards you play in several ways, Liadrin, etc and not one but two low cost buff cards that draw you cards. Said buff cards also combo with Pyromancer and the new 1 cost spellburst minion that deals 1 damage as a battlecry giving you HUGE aoe and single target removal potential.
Plus: It’s already hard to remove a turn 2 3/5 aldor attendant with hand of adal that drew you a card, but slap blessing of wisdom and thats a card a turn. And then there are FOUR other cards you can draw cards with, not counting crystology and call to adventure which have huge early value.
Crystology is not in Standard. If it was no one would complain Paladin has no card draw. And if you are counting Holy Wrath, Lay on Hands, or Hammer of Wrath as card draw… do you seriously think those are playable cards?
Why did you specifically pick out 2 weaknesses and then claim they are the only one with those exact 2 weaknesses? Is it because you are purposefully trying to make it look like Paladin is somehow inferior overall?
I can do it, too.
Priest is the only class that lacks card draw AND early game aggression!
Rogue is the only class that lacks taunts AND healing!
Warrior is the only class that lacks minion buffs AND healing!
Or maybe it’s because a class centered around buffs is very easy to tech against ?
You have to remember that in tournament, tech are used a lot, and you kinda know what deck you’ll be up against
Ladder vs turny meta being vary different has been told to dark many times in many different threads that I have seen but yet he keeps bribing it up as the same.
It comes down to he’s heavily bias to pally and will not hear anything that says pally is not in need of buffs and needs a ton of help. if you look at any of his thread you will see this. He will call to nerf everything and anything that is not pally to the point he has quite literly said he end goal is to have “warlock nerfed to being useless” among other classes that he has expressed a end goal to make them not viable via nerfing any card that pally has even the most remote issue with.
It’s to the point that he no longer has any leg to stand on when making a agruement. When you have become that bias your agruement makes no longer make sense and become the person no one should ever follow the advice of. Kinda hurts himself more than anything as if he wants buffs for the pally class not having such a heavy bias would make it more likly to get said buffs by pointing out the reasonable buffs and as such making it more likly to happen.
As for the thread as per blizzard the pally class is:
Weaknesses: Direct damage spells, destroying big minions
None of that reads it as having a ton of board clears or pings or cars draw or single target removal all the stuff the op is asking for. No it have vary different strengths that the current top deck is showing quite well via divine shield and buffs. The current deck is a great example of the exact identity blizzard said pally should have. In fact the limitation blizzard said it had is even not that bad right now with significant ways to reduce librims cost. So even pally drawback is being addressed quite well. Pally dose have more draw than priest and it dose have board clears via debuffs the exact thing listed as one strengths and they do it well. Yes it will leave them with low stats unless combined with small ping but that is better than many classes that just can’t clear a board of many large minions at all without spending quite a bit. Destroying them is there issue but that is exsctly listed there intended weakness you debuff them not destroy.
Ladder isn’t the same as tournaments (deck synergy, open decks, bans ) and while Paladin falls off in legend, it’s present everywhere else and with good results, the second most used class in current Standard thru all ranks.
As for Hunter’s “decent” vs Paladin’s “mediocre” draw, here’s the Standard beef:
Rexxar has pretty much just situational card draw, with 2 mana Flare the only direkt unconditional draw. Tracking is a double-edged sword - especially if you compare it to Rogue’s Secret Passage.
I see what you’re saying, however the point I was making was that card draw and board clears are two of the most important types of cards in Hearthstone today- and Paladin is the only class that lacks in playable cards with both traits. In fact, it’s the only class that lacks in so many vital traits at the same time, such as card generation, single target removal.
These are gigantic weaknesses, and unless they’re addressed, it’s a class that’s going to struggle to have any variety decks going forward.
Healing is great, however it has never been the most important trait in Hearthstone, its all about tempo and card draw/generation, of which Pally is the only class to lack it all- that’s unarguable. In fact for all the early game aggression it has over priest, Pally struggles to finish off opponents, due to lack of direct face damage tools.
There’s a reason it is the class with the least amount of viable decks today. There’s pure libram, regular libram and Murlocs. Anything else cannot see play until the class as a whole gets fixed.
There’s no point debating about the state of paladin in the forum, because all they care about is the winrate in low ranks on ladder.
To them, paladin is insane and fine…
Now, any paladin player and top performing players know paladin is just unilateral and isn’t able to adapt to different situations like rogue or mage decks.