Mage and priest definitely get treated differently. No argument.
Buff other mage archetypes. Reduce modresh to 8 mana, reduce wild fire to 1 mana, reduce reckless apprentice to 3 mana. Revert the nerfs to solarian and jandice. Buff the freeze and fire archtypes. Print some secret mage support.
I can think of a ton of buffs that don’t buff spell mage but buff other archetypes.
IMO, the win rates aren’t oppressive, but the problem i dislike is.
The mage gets to interact with me.
I get to have them freeze my minions, target spells at my face, and then do absolutely nothing the whole game while every minion gets removed, frozened, or used as fodder legitimately avoiding minions is supposed to be a strat.
But then if you try not playing minions… They just Fireball your face, cast apexis blast, and then cast a freeze on their own wand thief. To progress quest and clear you without a board.
I think the unfun of mage doesn’t come from win rate, from what i’ve seen, it’s fun to play, but playing against them is very boring. You spend the match frozen, punished by playing minions, unable to use board clears or interact.
It’s a lot like freeze mage, the winrate was awful before like 48%, but it’s up to 60% winrate and tons of people apparently play it, (either from day 1 crafts, or looking very powerful to newbs or attractive /known). But i think people saying it just needs stronger spells, Despite the other person just getting to do nothing is the wrong way.
It could be viable but more fun for both sides, just remove the freezes, give frost spells that don’t do damage but tame it back. Maybe have spells for the mage to generate minions while being fair so both sides can play for board instead of spending it get frozen.
The unfun is not the mage beating em, or playing the mage, it’s literally having nothing for the other side to interact with, while the mage is hovering over 20 cards, playing 10 a turn, and the other person is frozen.
Speaking as a quest shaman, i accept that there are unfavored matchups and that decks need counters and handlock and quest mage are both quest shaman’s counters, and aggro beats at least one of them, and quest shaman beats aggro in a rock paper scissors style.
And Buff / Secret pallies just beat a crap ton of stuff and go 50 50 with a lot.
I just want gameplay better than sitting there frozen, looking at a hero portrait where people go “But the mage interacts!” Sure, and i have no problems if their winrates go up, say if they got like a copy of the 3 mana deal 3 damage, summon a minion serpentshrine portal. Mages could have stuff like spell hunter’s animal companion and stuff like Firewolf Portal: Fire spell: 4 mana deal 3, summon a 3/3 flame wolf or some card like Frostgate Portal: 3 mana: Discover a minion under 3 mana to summon. (Improved by spellpower) idk.
Just some stuff that makes the mages interact a bit with board so that classes don’t sit with useless cards would be nice.
Being unable to be frozen but the class still fight and use the board even if it was minion creating cards could be nice.
It doesn’t matter if the winrate goes up, i just want gameplay that’s all vs being a sitting duck waiting for someone to slowly load the death rituation that shoots nonstop draw 4x 2 mana 9 damage fireballs at me.
I accept it’s a quest shaman counter that balances the winrates and i don’t think the deck needs to have a winrate go below 48% but honestly just some interactivity or some reasons for the mage to still summon things through the boards, whether through spells (Like animal companion or the 4 mana deal 3, summon a 3/3), could be nice. Spell schools and all, idk.
The winrate isn’t oppressive, it’s just really boring to play as the hostage really.
Not practical and fail in the basic.
Hero power mage never gonna be good unless you can buff your hero power consistently and if that happens it’s likely to get nerfed in less than a week due to baku and genn flashbacks.
Even if mordresh did cost 6 the deck would still bad too.
Freeze mage is both bad and unhealthy. Everyone who knows past iterations not want it again.
Fire mage fails in the exactly premise those spells fail. Would require the exact same buff I asking here.
Same for spell damage. Both have everything except good spells to go face.
Like…
It sounds funny on paper but people should atleast think when they suggest something.
Not wanna to be mean to anyone but really…
We not live in an ideal world so people should atleast be realistic when talking about those subjects.
Hero power mage is out of any actual chance unless more cards that buff your hero power are printed.
Mage has had decks that interacted.
They were complained about until they were nerfed too.
I myself would love to see mage go back to having minions and spells that are good enough on their own and don’t need massive mana cheats.
As to Stall(freeze). Mage has always had stall, and I think it always should.
Other classes rely on heals, armor, and taunts. Mage has always had stalls in the form of freeze and turn delay.
I feel like those things are critical to what Mages are.
Honestly, strange as it was. What if we tried buffing the mage’s refreshing spring water to refresh 2 mana a spell, 1 mana refreshed a minion?
It’d still be a bonkers card, but then hey, at least the mage would play minions. You guys could play stuff.
I could have something to shoot while being bored and use all the cards meant for a board to exist while you could maybe contest aggro more or have more freedom trying those mage cards and minions without not being completely screwed over by minion draws on spring water.
And then we make the 3 mana 3/4 “Your minion’s can’t be frozen” a core card just for people who want it. Maybe staple tradable on it.
And then balance it to like the 55-65% hsreplay winrate area, idk. I guess quest mage already has some 60% just without changes due to good matchups vs quest shaman’s adoptation and handlock apparently. So i guess it’s winrate is increasing just due to, outside of nerfs, better decks to eat, idk.
My suggestions for mage:
Remove no minion requirement for apexis blast.
Remove no minion requirement for the minion generation card, increase cost to 2. Better, would be make a card that does 3 damage to a minion and adds a random mage minion to your hand.
Take the spell damage draw card and make it draw 2 for two, if you have spell damage draw 3.
Print a 2 mana frost spell that does 4 damage to a minion and draws a card.
Delete Incanter’s flow.
Oh, and for op suggestion, yes, up damage to 3 but take away face.
Also, rank spells (the ones that upgrade) should become a mage staple (but be stronger).
This highlights what I think is the main problem with the current quest mage. It’s not that good, but the decks works exclusively from hand.
Even spell mage, as maligned as it was, needed minions on board early. The deck pushed early and mid game board, to guarantee a later C’thun Mask. You could both reduce the early game damage and the late game one by keeping the board. Thus, it was far more interactble.
The current iteration simply plays cards. You can’t really force it to do anything because it has theoretically infinite direct damage, AND plenty of removal, and all the spells can be neatly directed to face.
1 Like
Read the whole thing. Value later.
2 damage runic doesn’t kill the thing now, but if it gives you a card that lets you two for one or up trade something later, that’s more value for you… later. Again for emphasis. Later. Nobody said it can one for one all the time right now.
Better at what? I specifically said value later, and nothing you said have refuted that.
This is how the conversation went
Me: truck can do things that a truck does well
You: But truck can’t do things like a racecar! Sorry but truck is not better than racecar!
Look, if you all you care about is the things a racecar does, that’s fine, but that’s not looking out for “healthy mage decks”. That’s just looking out for “I want my class to be meta and meta can only mean this one playstyle (tempo) that I want”. Instead of everybody running spell mage, everyone will just run this more tempo-ish mage deck and all the other deck types continue to be seen as jokes, and you (and Mall) will be back here complaining about the same things all over again.
Better at nothing.
Even if I literally use frostbolt to freeze an enemy minion and not even kill it it’s likely to have a better long term value with the damage mitigation than a ignite or runic orb.
You can make up all the conjectures you want, but in reality, you don’t see mages run more freeze spells outside of quest for that quote unquote value with damage mitigation.
According to HSR, brain freeze is the only frost spell that sees more play than ignite or orb (ice barrier is tied with ignite as of this writing).
Speaking of brain freeze… brain freeze. You want a 3 damage + freeze that isn’t frostbolt? You already have it. You might even get more copies if you discover/run wand maker. And yet once again, in reality, the mighty 3 damage + freeze has not helped mage or led to any “healthy mage decks”
it’s a combo spell so the mana price is higher, right?
You can also make up all you want.
The fact is that mage spells are supposed to be flexible and know what?
The actual ones aren’t despite of how their text make people feel.
If you’re not pointing runic orb to face there is a high chance you’re missplaying.
If you’re not holding ignite until you boost it’s damage with spell damage you’re also missplaying.
There is no flexibility when one option is objectively bad. It’s why frostbolt is better.
It doesn’t matter if you can play the spells any other way if they were made to “prevent they from doing too much damage to face”.
Actually it turned out that this fear from devs made those spells exactly what they don’t wanted if that is really the case.
Why i would use they any other way if they literally suck when used in any other way.
You can make they only able to go face and there will be 0 difference.
1 Like
Let’s face it. Mage will always be hated no matter what.
Jaina gets the same misogyny and bias that almost every woman in gaming does.