Paladin in this standards have many issues. and are weak to many if not all card effects in the game.
But I’m here to talk about how Priest Hard counter paladin to a ridicules levels.
Priest currently struggling in the meta as well. They are doing fairly well with their Dragons , Gala and Resurrect archetypes.
but I’m gonna focus on specific types of cards they have that are Hard counter to paladin’s class.
First
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Lackeys : lackeys in general have very good values. that cripples paladin’s boards. they are utility support while out swarming the paladin’s board with their bodies on board and their battle cries.
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Low Cost Hard removals : Paladin spend a card from their hand and pay 5-6 mana only to get countered by Shadow word Death or shadow word:pain. or any other similar card.
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Shadow Madness. this card can steal minions and their deathrattle effects. paladin minions have many low attacks that this card can hard counter many different paladin archetypes.
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Holy Ripple . can clear many 1 health minions. including their silver hand recruits.
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Penance : this card can kill 18 out 28 minions paladin have in this standard. The only common paladin minions that survives getting one shotted by it are Amber Watcher and Aldor Truthseeker ?
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Breath of the infinite : Not only this card is cheaper than consecration and it clears 12 of paladin’s minions not to mention paladin’s tokens
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Mass Dispel. Because this card exists. paladin cannot reach tier one with buff spells. not only it cripples those archetypes . its also functions as a draw cycle.
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Plague of Death. this card can Shut down many paladin decks. it forces paladin to play around it.
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Soul mirror - due to paladin minions having lower HP than their attack. this ends up clearing all their board. on top of that it’s great value for the priest as well as they steal buffs like Wisdom.
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Gala - Destroy minions. again with hard removals. also adds more cards to priest’s hands. making Paladin playing around specific spells nearly impossible.
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Convincing Infiltrator - What else can I say about this card. Paladin don’t have hard removals or silence effects. the only way to deal with it is to trade. which not only forces damage into them. it also destroy the remaining minion on board.
while they can resurrect it or buff it with Grave runes …etc making it nearly impossible for a paladin to play.
For a class that is minion heavy. Paladin have few options to approach the priest.
Swarm gets shut down by Aoe spells
big minions. gets easily hard removed.or mind controlled
sticky minions with deathrattle gets silenced and destroyed.
buffing minions gets silenced.
out value them. trying to force Priest use all their resources. gets countered by Gala and resurrects.
meanwhile they swarm better than paladin they buff better than paladin they control better than paladin they heal better than paladin.
their dragons are much better than paladin.
They also can play murlocs better than paladin if they wanted.
So why is this allowed ?
5 Likes
Man, Priest just can’t win.
If the class is struggling, people complain. If Priest succeeds in ANYTHING, people complain.
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I’m mostly just annoyed that Paladin is described as having “powerful minions”. No paladin 2 drop wins the game on the spot if unanswered like the priest 2/3. None of the Paladin minions offer much more than a fat body that sometimes heals or buffs something, while other classes have huge tempo bombs that draw/generate tons of (sometimes free) cards, clear boards, or sometimes even both AND leave a fat body.
4 Likes
Are you sure people complain when Priest is struggling? That doesn’t seem like something to complain about.
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Paladin is just in a weird spot atm, no need to blame Priest.
New expansion might change a lot so we will have to wait and see.
Personally I’m glad Priest is doing better again, its been having a hard time.
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Even if they would remove all priest cards I would still complain they can slot neutral cards and play
4 Likes
Mentioned things are hardly hard counter. If paladin gets solid ground early priest can be in trouble. Perhaps only good counter against paladin is mass dispel as it can remove many effects same time. Still priest is not top issues for paladin.
However, everything is about deck types and you can’t counter everything. Plague of death is same for every class and it is late game card, much has happened before it comes in play. Do not over do your board and you are fine.
Normal paladin struggles anyway currently and mostly we see is some murloc action.
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People have been complaining about Priest throughout this expansion, even though no Priest archetype has a positive winrate. If on average, none of your class archetypes can win more games than it loses, I would call that struggling. And yet…
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Why Rogue can win easy vs Priest? …
Theres classes and counter classes.
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Since when is Priest playing Lackeys lol?
except that no priest-deck runs silence right now, they need to gnerate it with renew, which is luckbased.
Rofl, yeah and also they draw better than warlock and use weapons better than Warrior! 
Why do i lose against Rgue, Warrior and DH most of the time? How is THIS allowed?! 
3 Likes
Op, you’re only looking at things priests can do to ruin paladins, and assuming they’ll be used in the most optimal situations for the priest (e.g that convincing infiltrator DR hittinga big dude and not your recruit)
But one can do the same in the opposite direction, only looking at things that favor paladins.
Equality
Subdue
Libram of justice
These ruin res priest taunt walls.
Recruits are free minions that can soak up infiltrator and bait out aoe.
Sungil is dormant which disrupts AoE timing. 3 tokens in one card (sky claw also does this) also means it’s less efficient to remove them. They wake up on paladin’s turn so they can buff it with oracle or scalelord
You say priest have so much removals and aoes. I say buffs can push minions out of removal range.
You say mass dispel counters buffs. I can say the opposite: Liadrin can give spells back. Lightforged crusader has chance to give more back. Between these and paladins not over extending their buffs, two mass dispels aren’t going to counter them all.
Is a paladin going to run every single one of those things or have drawn them at just the right time? No, but same applies to priest. In my personal experience, paladin vs priest games is very much reliant on who draws better, modulo some RNG in what invoke/angler/pure paladin generates.
While at the end priest is still probably better in the meta (last I checked anyway), paladin’s current state isn’t simply a result of them being “hard countered”
5 Likes
priest is simply playing time, paladin is a matter of quick play, while mage is 100% rivalry
Note: priest does not instantly kill minions 4/4
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??? a lackey priest deck ? when did this happen?
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Must be the same deck that runs both Mass Dispel and Holy Ripple.
4 Likes
@First123
while what you are saying is true.
the issue here paladin would run out of steam faster than the priest. the only real advantage paladin have is Lightforged crusader . and that’s restrictive. while priest are far more flexible.
You misunderstood my point. I’m not complaining about a specific Priest deck.
I’m not talking about 1 to 1 situation. I’m talking about the Priest’s design in General.
Priest’s existence means paladin cannot reach tier 1.
(The less counters your deck gets the higher the Tier the deck)
If priest want to counter paladin. they’d have easy time Hard countering them. but paladin cannot really play against or counter the priest class.
That’s another Topic. yes some classes can counter another classes. but I don’t recall any other class Hard counter another like how Priest hard counter’s the paladin.
1 Like
But both Odd and Even Paladin were tier 1 decks at various points during Year of the Raven. This is despite the fact that Priest had either the same tools you complain about now (Mass Dispel, targeted removal), or better versions of problem cards (Psychic Scream is a better Soul Mirror, Obsidian Statue is a better Convincing Infiltrator, and so on). I’d even argue that Shadowreaper Anduin is a better hero than Galakrond, because it can actually close games.
If Priest’s design so fundamentally countered Paladins, you’d never have a meta where Paladins perform better than Priests. And yet, that happened a lot in Year of the Raven.
Could the argument be made that Priest’s current design keeps Paladin down? Maybe! But the data does not seem to support that: Murloc Paladin beats both Galakrond and Highlander Priest, and Pure Paladin beats Highlander Priest (but loses to Galakrond Priest). The best performing Priest deck against Paladin is Resurrect Priest, but that is both the worst performing and least popular Priest deck. These results don’t look like what I’d expect if Priests fundamentally countered Paladins.
2 Likes
but priest doesnt have a lackey deck so how is priest countering paladin with lackeys if the class lackey cards arent seening play ?
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Egg warrior vs rogue is almost 100% win for the warrior.
Rogue vs Priest is almost 100% win for the Rogue…
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I don’t see that as an issue. Few classes/decks could out value a priest in the long run. Most match ups against priest is usually the opponent trying to break through and kill the priest before the priest wears them down.
Not every deck can do this equally well. According to vs report 162, galak and res priest is slightly favorable against pure but slightly unfavorable against murloc pally (slightly, as in not to the point of hard countering). Highlander priest is near even against both pally decks.
Nobody is complaining about priest winrate.
The problems of priest is in their unintuitive almost zero interaction, rng-fiesta desing.