Does Blizzard actively hate Mage?

Multiplayer Discussion
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Given the state of the class, it’s hard to reconcile the cards it got in the mini-set. They look like they were designed for the most dominant class on ladder and one that needed to be stifled so that other classes could catch up, instead of for one that despite remaining popular I would argue has no truly competitive decks. Every one of the mini-set cards seem so much aggressively worse than what other classes are getting or already have access to, I don’t understand why they are being printed when Mage is already in a rough spot. The only explanation seems like either apathy or genuine disdain. Thanks for letting me rant.

EDIT: I didn’t realize when I made this post that there’s a belief by some players that the dev team really does hate mage. I don’t personally share this opinion, and only titled my post that as a tongue in cheek way to emphasize what I see as the weak state of the class. In doing so, I stepped in poop.

Had I known this was a serious assertion being made on the forum, I would have chosen a different title.

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Yes, Mallenroh was once mean to a pizza delivery driver and the ghost of Brode has cursed the dev team to relegate Mage to eternal torment.

But seriously, do you people just not use your brains while typing these things or what?

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Maybe the issue is that cards are getting so worse that isn’t only him that think this now.

Come on…
Eternal flame or whatever the name is text is literally made to get no other change on How the generated card Works other than not discount techysaurus.

I would not think of something so pity even If i actively tried.

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Look back over the history of the game. Since they ran off Brode, Mage has been stripped of every exclusive feature it had, and had those passed out like Halloween candy to to other classes, while classes like rogue? We get told that some cards are: “their thing”. Meanwhile; mage is given slot machine trash in discover and random effects as it’s only win conditions, with the imbue and ele deck being the few exceptions, which, everyone still screams about imbue, and ele is flatly not good enough past diamond . Also; take note of the fact that every expansion, rather than building on what mage had before, as they have done for years with warlock, pally, druid, shaman, etc, they have chosen to make the class over, so that new mage cards have no synergy at all with prior sets in standard or wild, (But at least once by accident in Wild.) Again; this has been consistent behavior since Brode was shoved out. Do they hate mage? They have never said this openly, but their actions suggest they do not want mage to be played, as mage is traditionally the most popular class. What irks me is that other classes can be wildly overplayed, and they do absolutely nothing. Pretty damning behavior, imho.

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YEp no brain me use.

Obviously I don’t think the dev team LITERALLY hates a class, do you people just not use your brain when typing these things or what? I was just emphasizing my point. If you have an actual rebuttal I’d love to hear it. I mean I wouldn’t LITERALLY love to hear it to be clear, since you struggle with nuance, but I’d welcome a more substantive reply.

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You won’t get a coherent rebuttal, I have years of evidence to suggest that team 5 makes mage weak, or difficult to play on purpose, to keep the play rates down.

Meanwhile; The players who defend the designers have no evidence at all.

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Meanwhile, WoW devs have been hating shamans for decades. Pretty sure hearthstone devs are no different. With the exception of some set gimmicks, their primary mechanic is designed to be a detriment (overload).

Mage feels like a favorite by comparison.

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I can show you successive expansions where shaman got synergy from set to set in Standard.

I dare you to show me that in mage since Brode.

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Mage has an interesting history. It was the default tutorial class for many years, so nearly all players once had a higher familiarity with the class, and it’s one of the reasons that the class remains popular, even when its best decks are only tier 3.

Mage has had its share of toxic decks, due to Ice Block being coupled with freeze and board removal effects or later, because of time warp, which I believe played a role into the devs shifting into developing Mage into a more RNG-based class (which is not very WoW like).

The devs seem to have an uncomfortable relationship with Mage, because:

1). The class became too popular in its history to the point where many players would only play Mage (like Mal). By weakening Mage, it increased player spending on other class cards as players shifted to better classes and decks. So from a business standpoint this made sense to weaken to get players to spend resources to experiment and strengthen other classes. This ideology may be less relevant now, and Mage should probably be developed to have a more equal footing to other classes.

To the devs: please tone down the concept that Mage needs to be the crazy RNG-based class as I believe most players would prefer that Mage became more skill-based again.

2). Early Mage had cheap decks with good tempo and synergy, whether it was with secrets or later with mechs. So again, it’s not surprising that developers shifted to Mage needing more expensive cards to perform better. Hunter has always been the class that that had the most consistent access to cheap decks that performed well enough to climb the ladder with.

So what classes have devs favored the most out of Hearthstone’s history? Answers may very dramatically based on what metrics are used to quantify an answer, but here is one players opinion:

“In my opinion starting with most popular ending with the least it may be something like:

mage, warlock, rogue, Druid, hunter, warrior, paladin, shaman, priest.”

While Mage may have been one of the most popular classes among players, what have been the most consistently best classes throughout Hearthstone’s history? I would say that Rogue, Warlock, and Druid have performed well over time, and I would add that Hunter has been the best performing budget class.

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Mage got to play with Ice Block for how many years? Meanwhile shamans had to deal with having less mana to spend than any other class in the game (overload constantly ruining mana curves). They also got shafted with much of their direct damage spells going from any target, to minion only. Windfury is also strangely absent more and more.

Mage has direct damage spells, where shaman relies entirely on minion only. Even when shamans did get direct damage, it always wound up having overload attached, like the class had to pay a price to be slightly worse than mage. Like “oh this spell is like fireball, clearly needs overload (2)”

I’m just saying man, mage has had plenty of years to shine, and shaman has had plenty of years of being poop. Obviously you can point out when shaman did good, and mage did bad, but like…so what? Mage shined for long enough, you can have a turn being poop.

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Wow…
One more turn bad.

And before anyone talk How one more turn nowadays Win most games.
We are talking about classic here where little to no decks can even pass 20 damage in a turn.

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Dude, you’re talking to someone who EXCLUSIVELY plays mage and nothing else, you might as well be talking to a wall.

Even when you point out a viable mage deck,it doesn’t matter, they want secret mage back

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I agree with some of this.

Starting with the idea that they purposely ruined mage from what it was in order to discourage play rates.

But the notion that they don’t show naked bias is naive imo.

They have had years since Brode to give mage any carry-over support from expansion to expansion.

I have yet to see any.

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A substantive reply requires a substantive OP.

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Well…

Get a worse explosive runes.
A card with multiple copies that is worded specifically to not Work with your current cards.
A literal miracle engine that Work on any other class except mage because targetted spells are easier push on your own Minions.

On a personal level i don’t even Care to discuss this because disagree is Just dishonest at this point but since i wasn’t the OP.

Here is my 2 cents on it. This miniset is worse than festival of legends mage set and that thing was so bad that more than 50% of it’s cards were buff in the long run and most still did see 0 serious play even after buff.

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This has been the mage story for years, and anyone who says otherwise is either not paying attention, or approves of the class being killed.

The entire expansion is this way for mage. “We brought dragons back” Yeah, and they are crummy and complicated in comparison to other classes.

“We brought secrets back” . Same thing. They printed a secret that probably won’t be very good, with zero tutors.

The expansion is meaningless kabuki for mage. They have no intentions of making mage good for fear that people will actually play the class.

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Oh boy. I guess I hurt your feelings… I wasn’t trying to. Come on man, another insult? Ok. So what I said about the game upset you but you aren’t smart enough to articulate why. And your initial reply trying to call me stupid made you look stupid, so now you’re using bigger words! They’re working, you seem like a genius.

Then why say anything? Do you look for posts to take personally and get all worked up about? Or what was the thought process here, why did you even respond to me? You seem to have a lot of time buddy. I got no more for you.

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Type ‘elemental’ in your collection search, then go from expansion to expansion from the past year.

Now outside of a few months it hasn’t been good but the same can be said for a lot of other class mechanics (rogue steal wasnt good until deja vu for example). The notion that they hate mage or whatever is pure nonsense. The real fact is they have lost the ability to design good entertaining cards for all classes.

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“It hasn’t been good.”

The prosecution rests.

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In fairness to you, I did not realize the dev team hating mage was a genuine belief among some forum posters. So I understand why you took my post seriously.