Don ' t tell me it has been . delayed ! !!<| sep |> Cr 1 tikal , is that you ? <| sep |> Paladin is a chief example of why I don ' t understand the design philosophy in this game . He has no reliable removal or damage burst except Truesilver , or sometimes Rallying Blade , and a full board wipe in the form of Equalityactivator . It would follow that his identity should be minionfocused , especially seeing as a lot of his cards are only playable if you control a minion . But the only class that has worse oncurve minions than paladin is priest . Mage and shaman , both classes with tons of reach , cheap singletarget removal , and fine AOEs , have insane and underpriced snowballing minions . Another thing is paladin cards are typically faircosted , or even overcosted , especially the recent ones . Nightbane Templar is a Razorfen Hunter that doesn ' t even have any particular synergy because having a dragon on the board is irrelevant for paladin . Silvermoon Portal is half the stats of BoK and a random 2 drop . Compared to Maelstrom or Firelands Portal , it ' s just sad to look at . Ivory Knight is actually a very nice card , but again , too honest except for when you get a thrid Anyfin while playing the otk deck . Paladin ' s hero power is still good in control matchups , but shaman ' s is pretty much always better due to a whole bunch of synergies and the potential Bloodlust burst . Meanwhile , the only card that synergizes with recruits is Warhorse Trainer from TGT , which is a joke card . Tirion is deemed the best legendary in the game and that ' s great , but let ' s be real . The only two classes that can ' t deal with Tirion efficiently are warrior and druid . In other matchups , your 8 mana card is worth a 24 mana removal with no deathrattle value , or you just die regardless . Okay , so we have a bad class with terrible classic set . What I don ' t get is what ' s stopping Blizzard from making the class viable seeing as the last two sets were not helpful at all . Unlike other struggling classes , like priest and rogue , paladin doesn ' t seem to have any mechanics you need to carefully balance around . Except for Divine Favor I guess . Divine Favor is an interesting example of a card that is often infuriating , but is not particularly relevant in the meta . In contrast to cards that were clearly intended for meme decks or epic youtube videos like Spirit Claws or Yogg , and ended up shaping the meta for some time , Divine Favor is a card that ' s only playable in a boardvomit , low curve deck . Unlike Yogg that at some point has been played in a whole bunch of different decks from control warrior to tempo mage , you will not play Divine Favor in a midrange , control , or a combo decks . And as long as paladin can ' t drop 0 mana 55 minions or just lethal the opponent with cheap burn , aggro paladin remains relatively tame , as statistics also indicate . The future of paladin looks grim . His entire set in Mean Streets is built around a gimmick that wasn ' t widely tested before , mainly because it was just unrewarding . It doesn ' t address his weaknesses as a class , it doesn ' t address his weaknesses as an aggro archetype , and in an offchance it becomes popular , well , it ' s nice that the best class in the game just got a 2 mana spell that shuts down your entire buffs and divine shields nonsense . The inconsistency of design is another thing entirely . In Old gods , we got Steward of Darkshire to synergize with 1 health drops to build a resilient and buffable board . In Mean Streets , those 1 health drops will not be 1 health anymore since we are supposed to buff them before playing . We got a first 1 mana drop that doesn ' t die to a ping with no value on an empty board , but there are still no meaningful murloc synergy cards apart from murloc knight , which rotates out soon , and Anyfin , which you wouldn ' t play in the same deck as Vilefin anyway . tldr paladin is bad and will continue to be bad . The upside is there would be no more arguing about the worst class in the game come the new set since priest has received some much needed help . Overall , it ' s cool you ' re posting about this because while ladder and tournament statistics paint a clear picture , it looks like it takes a Purifytier fiasco for Blizzard to acknowledge there might be a problem .