That might be the case (honestly I don’t know) but if you look at the data provided by VS, this is not true throughout the ladder (where different archetypes are played more often, and people have less kill)
I’ll give you another argument, one that you might perhaps more sympathize with.
A historical one.
Look at Defile. [Deal 1 damage to all minions. If any die, cast this again.]
This card can clear whole boards and is useful in the endgame as well. (the card requires ofc skill and set-up but that isn’t a problem in practice). Hysteria just complements this card, as it allows Control warlock to kill the giants from a Glarelock, thus covering a major weakness for both Priest and Warlock. And I am sub legend 40 in wild, I don’t want to see Glare stronger because other archetypes went weaker (with perhaps the exception of APM Mage)…
At 4 mana, Hysteria simply can’t compare in strength and overall utility to defile, a card released in Knights of the Frozen Throne. Ofc, it will still be played.
Hysteria powercrept mass hysteria, but the aggro tools have been powercrept as well, like intrepid initiate. Priest’s removal tools in standard are garbage in wild with the exception of hysteria, as they are terribly weak in a vaccum.
Devouring plague is such a *** card that is only useful in standard because of flesh giants (another very weak card that only works well because of plague). I have seen Zanananan’s face when the barren’s cards for Priest were announced, his face expression was similar to mine… The only reason priest does now fine, is because other archetypes were heavily nerfed.
Maybe doomhammer can get buff its just to expensive at 7 mana. It should be 6 mana, 5 mana with 1 overload or 4 mana with 2 overload.
Maybe they can also buff a few mage cards. Like maybe fireball to 8 damage,incanters flow to 1 mana and wildfire to zero mana. Things like that,just a little bit more damage or a bit cheaper would help now that mage is struggling so much. Maybe lunacy need be buffed as well,it just feels so underwhelming at 4 mana. 2 mana or even 1 mana would be better ty.
The data on matchups mostly comprised from people of every rank and people of average skill level, there are alot of misplay or badplay on the data, especially decks like priest or OTK DH, those decks mostly are underrated on hsreplay due to the numbers being crunched by people with worse pilotting skill. so it’s not 100% reliable, there is no way to filter out the top 1000 into top 100 as of now, and not everyone willingly to submit their play onto hsreplay, I for one does not save or upload matches.
Defile is a great card, but Priest doesn’t have it so its not an issue, Warlock having it is pretty fair for them, to be honest Warlock having Hysteria is pretty fair, just not Priest. Simply cause Warlock boardwipe ends their turn, they cannot cheat the mana of their spells with palm reading, Warlock cannot suddenly regain back full life with Apotheosis + Broom Giant or Samuro, and discovering 1293814 zero mana heal or one mana heal and discover more created by spell and other more overtuned priest spell. Stuff that Warlock tries to do usually takes their whole turn away, e.g. Jaraxxus. This gives other deck that tries to win the game by chipping away at Warlock health and gaining board becomes accessible, while nope to Priest, you can have the board and have the lethal next turn Priest can still go back to full health and taking the board with him in the same turn.
That is irrelevant. If people can’t pilot Priest unless they are in the 200 legend, the archetype is still weak outside of legend 200. Even though it has a higher theoretical strength, in practice the deck performs badly (the warlock fanboys are another reason). This is a practical truth for most players.
Well, the issue are not the removal spells then. See, warlock has better removal overall in standard, but removal alone doesn’t win games. It’s the package around it.
The problem may indeed be Samuro and apotheosis, or the discovery of heal spells, or palmreading (I always compare it to spring water’s manacheating), or the 10x rezed scorpions, but let’s not kid, the class removal spells Priest has is objectively *** outside of hysteria.
Oh, I don’t necessarily disagree there.
Priests like Warlock have a didacted followership. Priests tend to run their homebrew variants, they like to play. /shrug
While that would probably make Standard Hero Power Mage perform better and feel better to play without going overboard, it would kill my Even Hero Power Mage in Wild.
I find the deck extremely fun in both formats, so I am torn.
Reducing the mana cost of Wildfire is probably a bad idea, since it would basically remove the gains to Even Mage in Wild (and it would buff Odd Mage).
While I don’t think a buff to Wildfire is actually likely, if they do buff it, a better route would probably be to give it the effect of Waterboy’s Battlecry as well: “Your next Hero Power this turn costs (0).”
Even mage might replace wildfire with wand maker, although it would need to be a little bit of a high roll. Therefore not all the gains would be removed from even mage.
While it would suck for an off-meta at best deck to get hit, I doubt much of the wild community would complain if that off-meta deck got caught in the crossfire of standard buffs.
Its not like mage is struggling for options in wild atm or anything, and I doubt that hitting the presumed by many Incanters Flow will change that significantly.
And people asked for incantor’s flow instead of spring water. Blizzard is bad at balancing the game, and probably looked at the winrate of the card in standard (which is for highrolling cards such as alura ok), not of the powerlevel of the classes involved.
The only thing I was wrong was the fact that it was nerfed in the first place.
To be honest after playing against spell mage as weapon rogue (which weapon rogue is favored) around 50 games in the last couple days (rank 200 to rank 800 games), i dont usually lose to incanters flow or double incanters flow, cause their hand is pretty sad after that, i find most of my replays i lose to refreshing spring water.
I think it was the right nerf, i guess blizzard just want to make the bad matchup not winnable for mage.
