When comparing Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft vs Paladins, the Slant community recommends Paladins for most people. In the question“What are the best free PC games that can easily be played with friends?” Paladins is ranked 9th while Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is ranked 14th. The most important reason people chose Paladins is:
Paladins currently has 22 characters available to play, and those span 4 different roles. It should also be noted that brand new players will start off with 7 characters and need to play to acquire gold in order to unlock new ones.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Active community
It has a lot of players due to Blizzard's fanbase which means finding multiplayer matches is not all that difficult.
Pro Polished overall aesthetic
Possibly the most polished user Interface of digital CCGs. Unified and fun art style and flavor text.
Pro Great even for casual players
Hearthstone has a friendly learning curve that makes picking it up and getting started easy for people who don't want to spend a lot of time learning rules and tricks.
Pro Multi-platform
Available on PC and on mobile. Makes a great commute companion (provided you have internet).
Pro Familiar characters from Warcraft 3 and World of warcraft
The characters used in Hearthstone are all from the lore of the Warcraft series, making for a familiar universe for fans of the series.
Pro Brawl events, that don't require you to follow "the meta"
You can take advantage of weekly brawl events that give you a certain set of cards (so no need to pay to stay competitive). It keeps the game fresh, fun and fairly "casual".
Pro Entertaining Voice Acting
The voice work really adds to the game and makes it entertaining to play.
Pro Card Balances and Game Updates Often
The Hearthstone team is always looking at their data and community reaction towards cards and the state of the game, and they have made many card and game changes/updates to balance and improve the game for all players.
Pro You won't be cursed at in the chat.
Interaction with opponent limited to simple pre-made phrases, so you don't have to see how many 1337 gamers had their way with you or your mother. Or deal with the spam about free decks, new hacks etc.
Pro Near-perfect balance between going first or second
There's no significant first-turn or second-turn advantage in Hearthstone. The player going second gets an extra card from his deck as well as "The Coin", a card that gives one extra mana crystal for one turn. This subverts the advantage that would be gained otherwise by the player going first.
Pro Free to play that doesn't exploit
Yes it's free to play, but it's designed to easily continue to play and have fun without having to feel like you HAVE to pay. At the same time, after playing a while you'll probably want to.
Pro Great if you don't take it too seriously
HS is meant to be fun, lighthearted, and generally casual. It requires a lot of time and money investment if you wish to play seriously.
Pro An expansive roster of characters
Paladins currently has 22 characters available to play, and those span 4 different roles. It should also be noted that brand new players will start off with 7 characters and need to play to acquire gold in order to unlock new ones.
Pro Free to play
Everything that affects gameplay in Paladins can be unlocked simply by playing.However, there are cosmetic items available for purchase if you'd like to support the developers.
Pro Runs well on nearly any system
Paladins isn't a very resource-heavy game, which means it can be enjoyed by pretty much everyone.
Pro Great community
Every online game has some amount of toxicity, but Paladins has a relatively supportive community of players.
Pro Fast-paced and full of action
Paladins is a fast-paced first person shooter. Games are over pretty quickly, and queue times are short, so you can make the most out of your play time.
Pro Well balanced strength of characters
All champions in paladins are powerful and well balanced up to a point. Each character has their role in the games, and therefore, relies on tactics and champion picks in the game to win. If a champion, however, feels quite overpowered or weak, new patches will adjust him/her to a better choice for players.
Pro You can customize characters to fit your particular play style
Paladins has a system in place called "Card Mastery." Essentially, a player can spend their gold (or gems, if you choose to put money into it) on cards which will buff your character in specific ways in-game. These cards can radically change how characters are played, even allowing them to fit other roles in some situations.
There are also "Burn Cards," which allow the player to make themselves stronger or even counteract opponents' strategies. These are limited in used, but very powerful.
Pro Team based gameplay
Cons
Con Huge Money Sink
Although you can "technically" play for free, Hearthstone is very stingy on rewards. To get the limit of 100 paltry coins free a day, you have to win 30 games vs mostly players who have much better cards than you. It can take a new player 6 to 8(or more) hours to accomplish this. And after all this you get a pack of 5 cards that are often completely worthless to any viable deck. It's possible to get cards like "Angry Chicken"(worthless card) as the "Rare" card several times. You can also get a bunch of cards you already have a lot of.
Con Many mechanics based on random numbers
Random effects in the game use a random number generator, which causes an uncertainty of all outcomes. This causes one or both players to be frustrated because they can lose an already won game despite playing to the best of their ability.
Con The reward system is not significant enough
Hearthstone's reward system is very lackluster, providing little to nothing of significance to the casual or excessive player. There will be times when you feel heavily rewarded by the game, but these times are few and far between and if you are driven by rewards you will likely lose attraction to this game quickly.
Con Lacking a lot of depth found in better TCGs
Con Crafting is expensive
In lieu of trading cards, this game uses a disenchanting/crafting system to handle duplicate copies in your collection and being able to obtain the cards you want. Many cards disenchant for paltry amounts, and the best cards cost lots of "dust" to be able to play with.
Con Luck is more rewarding than skill.
When you lose a game in Hearthstone you don't learn anything because you generally can't play around most of the cards, most of the cards have random effects you have no control over it whatsoever.
Con Additional "Cards" must be paid for if not earned by continuously playing
There is a bit of a grind in earning new cards, so for those that do not want to spend the large amount of time needed to earn quality cards they will need to be purchased, which can get expensive.
Con Dependent on Battle.net infrastructure, not playable offline
The game requires a connection with Battle.net servers from the developers, and thus can't be played offline.
Con Ridiculously bloated
Over 4 GB data installed on ones device. Which is quite a lot of room, something many might not have to spare.
Con No trading with other players
Con The discover mechanic alone ruined this game
Luck tends to be more important than skill: there are numerous RNG-based cards in this game. Players that care about skill are better of playing other games, like Magic.
Con Simplistic and unintuitive card design
Very little mechanical depth, most of the complexity is based on random numbers.
Con Sometimes unfair matchmaking
Sometimes players will be matched up with people who clearly have been playing longer.
Con Poor port
Plays much better on PC. Sluggish and crashes often on mobile, sometimes connections can be difficult to make as well.
Con Chinese money > Freedom of speech
Blizzard WILL sell your soul to the chinese overlords for a couple sheckels. DO NOT play this game if you care about freedom of any kind. There are many other CCG out there. Have some dignity and principles.
Con The most recent patch makes it feel a little bit pay-to-win
With the recent patch, gold prices shot up on characters and cards, but the rewards you get for playing did not. Because of that, the gems you can buy with real money are simply the easiest option, even for people with a lot of play time.
Con Characters are not well balanced
Characters range from being highly underpowered to wildly overpowered.
Con Overwatch clone
Basically a free-to-play, less skillful Overwatch clone.
Con Still in Beta
Paladins is not a perfect game due to its constant lags and bugs and has to heavily rely on new patches to fix them.
Con In-game cards nullify characters
Cards like Cauterize and Wrecker completely nullify all tanks and healers halfway through the game, and it consistutes a battle of who gets the max first.