Since mage has no specific keyword or mechanic, I figured that it would be neat to give them one, so I came up with this idea
New mage mechanic: specialist
If your deck started with more of the spell school of the specialist card than any other spell school, the specialist portion of the card will activate.
Examples:
Lingering flame
1 Mana
Deal 2 damage
Specialist: at the start of your next turn, deal another 2 damage to the target.
Fire
Cryo blast
2 Mana
Deal 3 damage to a target and freeze it
Specialist: and it’s neighbors
Frost
Arcane conjuring
2 Mana
Discover a spell from your deck
Specialist: reduce its cost by (2)
Arcane
The main idea being that the cards are generally playable without the specialist effect, but that becomes a bonus for whatever element the mage specialized into during deck creation.
Thoughts?
2 Likes
I think the idea is creative. I think other classes will probably get to steal them from mage for free and use them better than mage could.
Well, it would be tough to steal it from mage, because if you stole a frost specialist card, your deck needed to start with more frost spells than any other spell school to get the bonus.
Which only shaman can realistically do.
Seems like a neat concept
Mage already has enough bullseyes on its back we dont need more reasons for the masses to target the class with nerfs.
If anything i want an invisibility cloak that never runs out of magic much like the deathly hallow.
As the Head of Blizzard, I will make this mechanic a reality if you give me a fly.
1 Like
No.
It is exactly because the class is inundated of “if’s” that it is bad RN.
It is always…
If your deck only has spells
If you played only good knows How many spell schools
If you play a specific sequence of spell schools(yes ,i still remember the questline).
What mage needs is to have good cards that not have a damm if in their mechanic.
It is that simple.
1 Like
The goal of this is to create that, with additional flavor and deck building considerations.
The conditionals usually make the game a more interesting puzzle with different things to try out.
I’m not a fan of the overly restrictive conditionals like all spells.
This is pretty light on it, where the cards are meant to be playable on their own with a bonus for a small deck tweak in the direction you want them.
Mage is literally so liked that devs have to keep nerfing and printing intentionally bad cards just for the playrate to not skyrocket.
The last thing the class lacks is flavor.
1 Like
I agree with you. mage needs straight forward cards that augment it’s core.
An alternative would be some kind of mage legendary with a start of game effect that gives a perk based on your spells.
E.g.
Start of Game. If your deck contains only one spell school, change your hero power to that school’s special power.
Frost - Passive. Every time a frozen minion is destroyed, get a copy of it (Once per turn?)
Fire - Passive. Your fire spells also target adjacent minions.
Arcane - (2) Spell Power +1. (Increases with each arcane spell cast this game)
I wouldn’t want to be that restrictive. I think cards are cooler when they can be mixed and matched, not when they are hyper restricting your deck into a rigid build but overcompensating with a game winning effect.