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Man, I need to retool my Paladin deck. I just don't think it has enough answers in it, and it tends to be terribly slow. I'm thinking I need to throw a Sword of Justice or two in there and tweak my overall mana curve. Against all these hyper aggressive decks, I'm just falling too far behind that by the time I establish board/card advantage, I'm within lethal range. At least SoJ will buff my hero power minions, and dropping 2/2's instead of 1/1's should help establish early board control.

I'm assuming I either just have no idea how to play my deck, or that it's just not strong against enough other decks, because when I switch to something like Zoolock or Kolento Hunter, the wins pour in.

Edited, May 3rd 2014 10:35am by Spoonless

I can't figure out if you misspelled "dodges" or were referencing the meme.

Slow down there Satan.

You could try something like Kolento's deck, or Sunshine Hunter (adjustments for the two legendaries are needed in that one, if you don't have them).

Kolento's is basically a midrange Hunter deck with no weapons or secrets, but you run a couple Houndmasters, Kill Command, and a Deadly Shot, which give you enough control in most cases. Animal Companion, Savannah Highmane, Scavenging Hyena (after some UtH sacrifices), Stampeding Kodo all give you decent bodies to Houndmaster. Hunter's Mark and whatever that 1/1 Charge boar is make for a 1-mana, 2-card removal which is alright. It also only costs 880 dust if you have to craft everything.

Sunshine is somewhat similar, but it runs 2x Eaglehorn Bow, 2x Explosive Trap, and a Freezing Trap, plus King Mukla and Leeroy.

I played in Arena against a Hunter, and he played an opener that I hadn't seen, but makes a decent amount of sense. I had no turn 1 play, so he coined out Buzzard. I had no direct damage for that, plus no minions on the board, so UtH wouldn't really hurt. Threw out some 2-mana 2/3 or some ****. He tosses out a Hyena for the single card draw, and sac's the Buzzard, leaving a 4/3 Hyena on the board on turn 3. Not a bad start, really. Prior to this, I had always held onto Buzzard for UtH later in the game, or maybe combo with some cheap beasts to fish for UtH. I'd never really seen it effectively used so early on. Obviously, if I had some sort of early removal (even an Ironbeak Owl for Silence), it could have been a huge waste of an important card, but I'll have to remember it anyway.

I've come to like Tracking, actually. It lets you choose from three cards, which I like better than just a random draw, and while it does discard two cards, at least you can see what cards they are and plan out the rest of your game accordingly. In more aggressive decks, it can be useful for thinning out your remaining deck in order to more quickly get to your important combo cards. It's certainly won more games for me than it's lost. Especially in that deck, since you're doubling up on most cards anyhow so it's typically not too terrible to throw some cards out. I mean, you're going to finish the game with a few cards left in your deck anyway. It's not much different than your UTH/KC sitting on the bottom of your deck, except that if you throw them out with Tracking, you at least know you can't topdeck them later.

I wonder if you could build an effective Hunter deck with a Gadgetstan Auctioneer. Hunter does have some cheap spells, but they're not really spammable, so I don't think it'd necessarily be easy to do. Buzzard/UtH can be effective enough as your only draw option in a hyper aggressive deck a la Face Hunter, but I think you need at least some other draw in your deck.

There needs to be a better disconnect timer. The minute it gives you to reconnect should extend your turn timer for that full minute. To avoid abuse, limit it to one turn extension per hour or something. Second time I lost a game to disconnect on my turn where I had lethal in hand. FIOS makin' me mad.

If you're at all interested in playing Priest in Constructed, you should give Amaz's stream/videos a view. He exclusively plays Priest, and was Legend last season (currently Rank 3). He's super chatty and high energy, and is usually a fairly positive commentator.

http://www.twitch.tv/amazhs
https://www.youtube.com/user/amazhs

I find him pretty entertaining to watch, and prefer him to just about any other constructed player, since they're usually running decks that I hate (Miracle Rogue, Zoolock, Hunter). MaSsan sometimes plays Shaman in constructed, but I only like his stream when he's in Arena. Trump is decent on his F2P decks, but I haven't really liked his constructed play streams recently. Hafu is supposed to be a faily positive streamer, too, but I haven't had the opportunity to check out her streams.

Edited, May 6th 2014 1:02pm by Spoonless

They really do need to shorten turns, and I say this as someone who does occasionally see the fuse. But way too often, people really take their time...

Priests are easily the worst offenders, I find, followed by Druids.

UTH increased from 2 to 3 mana. They would have been better off making Buzzard draw on friendly beast death, instead of on summon. That way you can't really fish for your Timber Wolves.

Honestly, I think UtH is still too strong.

I mean, I totally accept that a big portion of its power comes from its ability to combo, and that this is dependent on the size of your opponent's field. TOTALLY get that.

But the sheer power of the combo can be really quite huge. Particularly if you have a rhino out (or toss one out with it).

That, at the old mana cost, sounds more reasonable to me.

To come back to this one, I still think this would have been a better fix than the mana increase. I'll have to play my Hunter decks a bit after the increase to see how it is, but I don't think delaying the fishing combo an additional turn will really be effective enough. Maybe with changing Buzzard to draw on death, you could change it to a 2/2. I think this change works nicely because it mostly forces the Hunter to choose between fishing and choose between damage to the face. Right now, you can fish and still do all that damage to the face. Then again, look at Miracle Rogue. It does a similar thing with Gadgetstan Auctioneer and spells. Fishing and damage to the face all in one. Though, having played Miracle a bit, it does feel like it takes a bit more savy to win with it than some of the Hunter decks.