There is a conclusion in the end If you not wanna hit a wall of text.
Now to start it:
I’m think that it is already clear that player agency regarding mage decks is pretty much violated at this point.
In the sense that the imbalance is so high that you have to play perfect matches to barely keep up.
While it is true that Sif was not exactly the healthiest card in the game i’m think that there was a lack of ideas on how to handle ways to replace it regarding both maintaing some game balancing and make the choices mage players do meaningfull during a match.
That proof by their choices of buffs:
Mes’adune and manufacturing error are buildarounds.
Even if they were strong enough post buff to justify decks they would still not make the decisions of someone playing mage even slight more relevant during the match.
Do you know where you find real player agency in mage?
Generated cards. Unless devs allow themselves to ignore the hate and let mage players to explore the random aspect of the class in the proper way(yes, deal with randoness is a skill people liking or not).
Get that much randoness creates puzzle solving situations.
Here is a list of cards that would actually help mage player decisions to be meaningfull if they were better:
1.Tae’thelan:
Between the discount cards this is literally one of the few with a (not less than 1 clause) and also the one where it does make 0 Sense.
I’m not finding infinit loops or OTKs out of random cards anytime soon.
This is literally using a balancing clause on one of the only cards where it does not make sense.
And one card that would reward thinking about your current hand if it was good.
- Rewind
If you want more player agency than make the player remember what he played during the game and think possible answers is almost the pinacle of it.
Basically if you want more player agency in mage decks you want this to be more than “this was made for lightshow card” and should buff it to cost 1.
3.Heatwave:
Can we just make the card decent?
Even fan of knives being a classic card from a class that in theory should be bad on clearing boards is better than this.
Something good and Fun would be:
Deal 2 damage to all enemy minions. Quickdraw: Add another heatwave to your hand.
Makes the base version decent and have a extra one generated has some sinergies.
That without even call the modulation capacity it gains by being able to play multiple times in the quickdraw turn.
Those are some suggestions but basically:
Let mages work they generated cards the proper way and build decks around that capacity.
Conclusion:
Puzzle solving is the pinacle of mage decks and that gets more and more important the more you let randoness go wild in the class.
So if you really want player agency for mages. Reward mages with powerful cards that incentivos they to play as less cards from their decks as possible.
A example of the concept would be:
Confused giant
Cost 12
8/8
Cost 2 less for each card you played that did not start o your deck.
Edit: Yes, similar stuff already exist but the point is to have pay off cards for playing random stuff.
