But they are punished for playing the class that they enjoy as evidenced by the figures in this article.
Everyone said I was biased for claiming that mage gets treated differently?
The numbers don’t lie.
Spell centric classes are treated far more harshly than minion classes.
I was right, and everyone who said I was wrong can eat their words.
You know who you are.
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i dont believe it
and if they are “punished”
only those who limit themselves to playing a single class in 6 years …
im guessing the ones who do this arent that many
Perhaps more than you imagine.
I would say there are many players who chose classes when this game
went to Standard/Wild, as they could not afford to f2p all nine classes.
And there are those who chose said classes for the RPG aspect.
At any rate; the numbers show clearly what I have been saying for at least
four years. (probably more)
Spell casters get treated differently in terms of decks given, in terms of complaints, and in terms of knee jerk nerfs…
Mallenroh pretty much beat me to what I was going to say but I would add that like 80% of my legendaries are non crafted, so I believe that many players who are aligned with a class don’t have much say in the matter of what they play aside from for small moments between when they used a lot of dust.
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Doesn’t take more than half a brain to pick removal, removal, heals, and more removals. Oh, and dragons.
Shaman had that much top decks ? How come ? Can we all try to list them ?
Its not a count of how many decks, but how many weeks a class spent with decks in T1 or T2. Kara totem Shaman through Meme Streets Aggro/mid shaman alone was a lot of weeks.
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Oh, gotcha. My bad.
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Anyway, @OP - now that you’ve put the effort into compiling all this data, please keep your spreadsheets updated, and give us a couple of reports of your own per set (launch & mini-set).
Would be interesting to see where it goes in the future, and you’ve already done the hard part.
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oh wow, that looks like quite some work - thanks Aegaeon.
i guess it shows that Blizzard generally tries to avoid giving the more controlly classes (priest, mage, warlock) strong tools as that would lead to longer games and apparently they think it keeps people away if they have to think about their resources too much?
Kinda sad for me as a player that prefers the control-style, but it´s not unexpected.
Also just ridiculous how dominant Paladin had been the past year and how long they waited to nerf it for exactly the wrong moment to do so.
we had a nice discussion about climbing to legendary as priest at the start of the month.
However this is very specific about D4-1, on lower ranks you might need a different approach/class albeit i think at this point most of those decks might have “trickled down”.
I personally don´t think menagerie priest is a good deck, it´s often very clunky and awkward for little payoff but it still can get the job done with proper piloting (i think way too many priest builds are tainted by high legends/proplayers trying to apparently build it for the mirror which is just not great if you want to climb through ladder)
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I tried to point out that both Mage and Priest were treated different by Blizzard a while ago and even with the devs saying so both in twitter all the time and in media artitles i got flooded with people saying theres no proof…
So there you have it , but im sure even this wont be enouth for some next thing you now they will be saying even math is lying…
You not winning as much as you want is not punishment. You’re confusing equality of opportunity with equality of outcome
Everybody has opportunity to play what they find fun*
Nobody is entitled to the outcome of the deck they find fun being #1 in a competitive environment.
And that’s the thing about your claim about treatment and how these numbers prove it. They don’t. The stats are only showing the outcome. You can only guess what treatment, if anything, caused it. Correlation does not imply causation.
*if you want to split hairs though, the fact mage is the first hero everyone gets without having to beat the innkeeper actually means everyone except mages have a harder time playing what they find fun.
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I’m too lazy to dig the stats like the OP did, but I suspect they come from the few times when shamans did in fact get a strong if not OP deck. Off the top of my head…
“Shamanstone” around karazhan (I’m working off memory here so I might be off by an expansion or two), when shamans got a series of good cards (including good overload cards). Forgot how long that lasted.
Galakrond shaman. On initial release it was good, and it could be combined with the above stuff since invoke is a battlecry. Then they nerfed like every galak shaman card. That lasted like a month.
Evolve shaman around end of scholo to first half of Darkmoon. That’s at least a good 2 months
I’m having memory gaps in how shaman performed from un’goro to like witchwood. There might have been something, or there might have not been.
I misunderstood the stats, I thought it was a number of decks when it was the number of weeks that were counted here.
I do remember the strong shaman metas, but I don’t remember numerous one, in my head, shaman is not often strong, but when it is, it’s stupid. That’s why I were surprised.
But the fact it’s time that is displayed here, makes it less surprising. It even makes it logical imo.
Yeah.
But, for full clarity, it includes all unique decks for those weeks/VS reports as well.
For example, the one that sticks out to me is Mean Streets.
Shaman would have had Aggro and Mid, and Warrior had Pirate and Dragon.
So each of those classes is represented at least twice in that ~4 month period (up to 16 reports).
Shaman was literally the undisputed ruler for half a year up until Un’Goro, shifting between aggro and midrange. That alone takes probably ~30 times it was #1 deck. If I had to guess, the remaining top times would be Token Shaman from late Un’Goro and evolve from Doom in the Tomb because it was broken.
This didn’t come as a surprise to me 
Thanks for taking the time to compile this.
Because of the 1-2 punch of tunnel trogg and ancestal knowledge / totem golem dodging nerfs for their entire duration, if I remember correctly. It was ridiculous.
Another useful compilation would be a nerf history lesson.
You’d have to use some subjectivity and accord neutrals with what class was using them to oppress at the time, warranting the nerf.
I would be willing to bet that on top of this report showing Mage as one of ~three weakest classes, they are also subject to the largest volume of nerfs of the course of the game.
I do understand that spell classes are judged more harshly, because of the “uninteractive nature” of spells. But the weapon classes have it too good it would seem.
IMO there needs to be more defensive options for mage particularly, akin to Bulwark, where it’s not just minions (like mirror image) that can be easily cleared. Taunt minions are too ineffective as defensive options for mage.
Priest, mage and warlock should all be given more weapons, that are 0 attacks.
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So mage is trash tier and still a quarter of my opponents this month. It would likely more than double if it was T1.
No one, except maybe you, wants half their matches against the same deck - any deck.
no one satisfied is unrelated to balance. It’s human nature. Someone will always complain.
I think the game is pretty balanced right now, tbh. I haven’t been bothered by the meta in months.
The only thing you ever talk about is for mage to have a deck in standard that you can play. Seems like that’s all it would take for you to claim it is balanced, and that’s not what any of this means.
No one is punished. You’re free to play any deck you want.
I didn’t say he was wrong, I said his rationale was cynical.
I disagree. As long as people over play classes like mage they will be garbage.
If you have a better way to do it, you should apply for a job at Blizzard.
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