Another 12 win Paladin for me - b2b 12 wins for me, I hadn't done this before. Arena win rate over 75% this month now

Drafted w/ forthelulz, at this point I think we have Paladin down to a science. Clearly the best arena class in the game!


2 packs and 395 gold, def better than the previous rewards.

What makes paladin the best class?

I'm still learning and only averaging about 4 wins an arena. Priest seems to be my strongest class so far. Haven't really experimented with paladin, but I am pretty poor with him him basic. I've always heard mage is the end all be all in arena, but I'm awful with her.

Hopefully this makes sense, I'm definitely not the best HS player out there.

Essentially, right now Arena is about tempo, which is to say that the best decks are generally very very good at playing cards that help you gain board initiative (such as creatures that can kill an opponent's creature and still be a threat on the board). Often the key to this is being able to play your full mana's worth of cards every turn while forcing your opponent to 'skip' their turn by doing something inefficient early on which will slow them down.

An example of this might be you playing against a Mage, where they play first. On turn one you both pass. On turn two they play a 2/2 (frostwolf grunt, or pint-sized summoner or something), you respond by playing a 2/3 (mechwarper, river crocolisk, etc). The mage then decides the best way to respond is to run the 2/2 into the 2/3 and then kill it with the hero power, and then ending their turn. Essentially you've gained a sizeable edge in tempo here, as you are now the person acting 'first' on the board. Similar edges in tempo can be gained by using things like divine shields, or cards that grant buffs like shattered sun cleric or dark iron dwarf. Ideally you gain enough of a tempo edge that your opponent is constantly forced to have an answer to each new threat you play every turn, without having a chance to develop their own threats.

Anyway, Paladin has a ton of cards that are really great at doing this. Shielded Minibot (2/2 divine shield) is capable of killing two 3/2s (or you could use something like blessing of kings to have a 6/6 with divine shield). Truesilver Champion generally allows you to remove two of your opponent's threats at the cost of only one card. Argent protector often lets you kill an opponent's creature for free. Similarly, the hero power works very well in a tempo sense. Those 1/1s may not look like much, but if you can combine them with an abusive sergeant or dark iron dwarf, suddenly they're like a 3 damage removal if your opponent doesn't deal with them, or add a stormwind champion into the mix and now you have an army of 2/2s.

And you can see that the decklist Bobbo posted is full of really great tempo cards. Muster for Battle (equip a 1/4 weapon that can do cleanup duty on creatures [eg. suddenly your weapon and an ogre brute can kill a chillwind yeti]), Stampeding Kodo (kill a 2 attack creature for free + put a 3/5 creature of your own on the board), Dark Iron Dwarf (allows one of your small creatures to kill a bigger one), etc.

Mage is also a really strong class, and you *can* play a very strong tempo game with it, but it's usually slightly more difficult to draft in that direction, and its value generally lies more in being able to efficiently remove the other person's threats (polymorph, flamestrike, fireball, frostbolt, etc.). I think Mage and Paladin are probably super close in terms of which is better in arena for most players; but it's all very player dependent.

Really good writeup by Binkles

Will add that the basic pool of Paladin cards is stronger than anything other than Mage - the basic paladin cards include Blessing of Kings (A+ card), Truesilver Champion (A+ card), Consecrate (A+ card) and Hammer of Wrath (A- card). I also like the Light's Justice (B+ card) and Guardian of Kings (B+ card)

So naturally your deck tends to have a stronger flavor than other classes. For example, (and it's easy to pick on the weaker classes) compare the basic pally cards to something like Warlock. (Which right now is probably a mid strength arena class anyway) Sac Pact, Corruption, Succubus, Voidwalker, and ~Drain Life are virtually undraftable. Soulfire, Shadowbolt, and coil are somewhat weak, so you're left with Hellfire and Infernal as the only 2 basic cards that are good. (And they're merely very good, rather than great)

Paladin hero ability is also arguably best in the game, which helps

Sigh just had a really strong Druid deck that ended at only 3 wins. Ran into a couple absurd decks. First one was a Priest who responded to my Turn 5 Druid of the Fang 7/7 with a Vol'Jin, then ran his Dark Cultist into my Druid leaving him with a 6/10 minion at Turn 5.

Then I ran into a Paladin deck that had an amazing start for a constructed Paladin deck.

First 5 turns were

Coin > Minibot
Minibot
Aldor
Truesilver
Sludge Belcher

Good luck beating that

You basically describe my arena experience. Seems like every opponent I lose to has sick decks or an awesome setup/start.

So I've played maybe 12 arenas so far and have never drafted a legendary. Is that normal?

somewhat normal, maybe running slightly bad. not sure what the true % of a legendary pick is but it seems to me i draft one every 10 arenas or so.

Just had back to back 8 and 10 win runs with Paladin.

Thanks Binkles, the writeup really made me focus on individual decisions.

Also, thanks to the Echoing Ooze/Blessing of Kings combo for getting me at least 3 wins in my last run.

and another one joined by bobbo towards the end! the final boss resigned on turn 6 after I used aldor on his venture co

Anyone else seem to be running bad on rewards lately? Had an 11 win Warlock deck last night that got 200 gold, 75 dust, a gold common, and a pack.

Std Blizzard

Blessing of Kings + Blessed Champion combo is A+ for Arena. I feel like the biggest issue I have with Paladin Arena decks is finding a finish to a game, and that gives me a very easy path to get there.

I don't think I've ever picked blessed champion

I think I picked it with Pry when the choices were terrible, but I don't even remember

1 out of like 50+ paladin arenas?

Does it count as my first 12 win arena if it was my buddy's account and we collaborated?

That said I think I've decided there's definitely a lot of matchup related luck in the arena, I've seen much better decks lose at 3-4 and this one was toast if it lost the board... Somehow ran into exactly one mage with 0 flamestrikes. 4x priest, 8x paladin, 1x mage 1x hunter. Chow + Coghammer + 4x Shredder + a handful of protectors are prettay prettay good if the other guy doesn't have mass removal (only ran into like 2 consecrations even).

The relative strength in arenas makes me tilt out of my ****ing mind

I have a pretty strong paladin arena deck, but first game vs mage, the mage did the kirin tor mage + secret combo on 3rd turn. Basically had to play around that secret on my turn 4 as I didn't want to risk mirror imaging my chillwind yeti, so I played muster for battle. As it turned out, it was a mirror image, as I played a top decked gnomish inventor on turn 5, but I lost the game as I couldn't play a strong turn 4 with the yeti. Would you guys still recommend I play yeti on turn 4? I didn't really have many other alternatives to activate the secret. My deck has very little removal after my Truesilver Champion ran out, then the Mage started playing his big minions and I lost.

it's hard to say. sometimes you are in a position to play around things and sometimes you are not.

Are the games noticably easier at nights and weekends? I'm playing on the EU server (it's 8:30pm on friday there) and my 0-0 game seems like it was against a guy who is playing his first arena match ever. He played a drain life on my healing totem on turn 4 (i had nothing else on the board and he was nearly at full health). And I've played two people who both played stoneskin gargoyle as a naked turn 3 drop without seemingly any kind of combo to buff it or anything.

I had what I thought was a bad shaman deck but I'm 7-2 right now. Here's a turn where I wasn't sure what to do:



My two plays are to kill the ogre with my axe and hero power, or play shade of Naxxramas and then next turn kill it with the axe and play the totem as well possibly. Which one is better? I feel like the 2nd one is stronger but the problem with this deck is once I lose control of the board then I lose the game (it's how I got those 2 losses) so I feel like clearing the board has a high priority.

play axe and totem, this one isnt close

My thoughts as well. What were the other choices for you to pick the oracle? lol

coldlight into elven archer + wisp