First of all, this isn’t a rant, I’m genuinely trying learn if there is reasoning behind why Paladin is given so many mechanics.
To start; it probably would be good to point out all that they have received in eight years.
Weapons, Divine Shields.
Secrets, Healing, and Minion buffs.
Battlecries, Deathrattles, and Taunts.
Inspire, Murlocs.
Discover, Adapt, Charge.
Recruit, Echo, Lifesteal.
Magnetic, Immune, Rush, Overkill.
Twinspell, Reborn, Sidequests.
Librams, Dormant.
Spellburst, Ressurect.
and Tradeable.
Correct me if I left anything out.
It seems to me that Paladin has received more mechanics than probably any other class over the years.
I was wondering if there is a reason why?
Is the class handicapped in some way that it needs to be given every mechanic?
they are throwing it at a wall and seeing what sticks
But why Paladin? the only thing I can see that it doesn’t have alot of is mana cheat and face damage.
why not paladin, why rogue? why should it be mage?, which class should it be?, does it truely matter which class it was, or will be?
They have pretty poor card draw and removal
it also only has 1 hero, didnt get gala, and etc.
for a time paladin was the class that had half-finished mechanics, and as someone above said, they kept throwing half-made archetypes in case something sticks. (something that you complain all the time about mage nowadays).
that’s why you see that there are a lot of old mechanics in that list that were never that good to begin with (inspire, echo, overkill, reborn, etc)
inspire has potential, it comes back now and again in different forms, such as dragonbane
The answer is quite simple, say what you want about Mage unfun to play against ,unfair blabla but its realy fun to play while Paladin puts both players to sleep.
This is the result of the devs trying for years to fix that ,they have been giving everything under the sun to the class to up its play rate.
So is that why? Card draw and removal?
Okay, so I still don’t understand why the class needed all of these attempts.
Is it inherently weak compared with other classes? I mean; does it have a built in disadvantage?
80% of that list applies to every single class.
Well, I only play mage so I can’t speak with real authority, but I believe no other single class has as many keywords and effects as Paladin has been given and I wondered why.
its main probalem has always been that it didnt have comeback mechancis since it was so board focused.
then they removed/nerfed his best card draw and removals on top of it for “class weakness”.
in their place, they started throwing archetytpes but never completing them:
Like that thing with the 1hp minions.
Or dudes that get like 1-2 cards every expansion but never critical mass of them.
Or murlocs that they get a couple each expansion but almost never enough to actually make a deck out of them (especially since murlocs require heavy draw, which was the paladin weakness). *Once, after getting murlocks since like gvg, they did manage to get a single murlock deck, and that was only because of cheesing all of them out of their deck lol.
Big paladin.
Control paladin.
Or “heal” paladin support (convert health to armor, and etc).
and a lot more others that i keep forgetting.
Similar with their quests. Galvadon was so meme that there were even songs about him. And the reborn thingy never got any support.
Basically, when you have a class that has an identity crisis, and the responce is to throw different stuff at it, you WILL ende with a jumbled mess of mechanics all around.
p.s.
mage similarly has a ton of keywords as well.
leaving aside the stuff that everyone has, mage has spell damage, freeze, secrets, “cast from deck” (similar to recruit), twin, sidequests, spellburst, etc
That’s sort of what I was thinking and I appreciate the cohesive answer.
I wasn’t trying to imply that Paladin has been overtly favored, just that
it seems like they have been given a bit of everything,
and it made me curious as to why.
I would rather not make this about Mage. I know how players get when I mention them.
Almost all the things listed are not exclusive to paladins. You could pick any other class and be able to make a list just as long. It’d be easier to point to things a class rarely/never gets (e.g mage and rogue rarely get taunts and heals; paladins rarely get nuke spells or removals that didn’t take a minion or weapon attack to follow up)
And this doesn’t go into whether those things are actually competitive.
But frankly, if any one class is to be given “everything”, paladin makes the most sense.
You’re talking about a class that, in most lore, can wield weapons, can wear the heaviest armor, and cast magic (often healing and “defensive” ones, but depending on universe they might not be limited to that). Depending on the universe they might have additional perks and abilities, like leadership skills or being immune to diseases.
It’s very disingenuous to list so many mechanics that are global. Everyone got tradable cards. Everyone gets tribal themes. Etc.
Paladin tends to get wildly unrelated cards and has by far the worst synergy overlaps, so if there actually is a higher level of total mechanics that’s probably why.
Pardon me, but I’m not critiquing the class. They just seem like a class in search of an identity.
Most of their spells and effects don’t seem to have anything to do with Wow Paladin abilities.
I remember avenging wrath and things like that. But these days their abilities seem to have little to do with the Paladin theme.
That seems like an odd claim.
During the Year of the Dragon, there were a lot of complaints from Paladin players that the Murloc and Mech focus of a lot of what they got that actually worked didn’t really fit with the way most players thought of Paladin. And beyond that, the YotD Paladin sets drew a lot of complaints because they were all over the map.
But the recent sets seem to be much more focused, especially the two so far this year. There’s a lot working with Divine Shield and buffs to minions in particular. Also, lots of dude stuff. Secrets have been a big theme this year too, which have been a Paladin thing from the beginning (though you could argue that they’re probably the least obvious of the original Secret classes as a fit for the Secret mechanic).
I think this is good. I would love to see all classes return to more traditional roles.
I would have bet that players of paladin would not care so long as the cards worked well.
Makes me feel better to know that I am not the only player who thinks class roles and lore are important.
It may have been a small group — it’s hard to judge size from how many forum posts there were — but there was definitely a really vocal group of Paladin players, especially during YotD, that were very unhappy both with how scattered the sets the class was getting at the time were and even more with the importance of aggro decks built around Murlocs or Mechs for Paladin in those metas.
Well that was the whole point of the thread. Paladin seems to have a little of everything and no real focus on anything, and I wondered why.
But, it sounds like that is changing and so that’s good:)