To be fair, they actually did show that they can do it now in DMF.
From the start of DMF, both Secret and Highlander Mage were competitive decks in Standard. Both were pretty frequently in Tier 2, and they also showed up in Tier 1 for a couple of reports each.
And with the addition of Imprisoned Phoenix in the mini-set, Spell Damage Mage also got strong enough to make it to Tier 2 for a lot of the last two months of the expansion.
Obviously rotation and the switch to the Core set removed Highlander entirely and knocked both Secret and Spell Damage pretty much out of competitive range.
But the DMF meta does suggest that they can make multiple competitive Mage decks that aren’t clown fiesta.
It’s just that a lot of these decks — like Secret and Spell Damage during DMF — seem to require a critical mass of synergy cards to work. So, since the designers seem to prefer to put out small, incomplete packages slowly over the course of several expansions, Mage seems like it is probably going to be stuck in the position that Priest often has been: needing to wait until the end of each Standard year to have enough pieces to put together any competitive decks not based on a crazy gimic.
Capitalism means that the company has to compete for your business to get that profit. It’s always in their best interest to please the customer.
It’s government intervention ie. cronyism that upsets the fairness of capitalism. Lawyers, lobbyists, lawmakers, regulators, congressman… that’s where the problem stems from, and it’s not an inherent part of capitalism. Not to want to derail this beautiful thread though! sorry!
Skinner Box tests suggest that random rewards are more effective than constant rewards. Lootbox mechanics are what they are because people will spend more money trying to get what they want than if they’re just buying the things they want directly.
I agree with all you said, but it is also true that corporations have become greedier and far less ethical over time. It’s not enough to make a healthy profit anymore.
Most Corporations must make as much profit as is mathematically possible, with zero regard for any other concern.
I think the monetization talk is beyond the scope of this thread. I’m suggesting that a cycle of classes being weak and powerful probably keeps more people playing and trying different classes compared to if there was a strict hierarchy.
Let’s keep in mind that the data pool, while quite large, is still missing several years of game balance. Paladins, for example, having a lot of strong decks could reasonably be the response to them being pretty bad for the previous few years. Which is how I remember it going, aside from Mysterious Challenger Paladin. We know it’s why Shamanstone rolled around. There’s always a class vomiting the most stats onto the board.
Plus, we can reasonably say that Warlock was quite strong for the first couple years, and the chart suggests it’s been on the back burner for a while.
Oh sob sob, mage has been number one deck less that others, and so what ?
Mage, priests and every other classes have their fair share of top meta decks.
Stop craving on every data you can in a poor attempt to make the devs overbuffing the favorite class of yours so you can win games without any effort.
I used to don’t give a damn about mage, but just because of your existence, now I dream about seeing Mage trash tier during 2 years or more, just so you start to understand what it is for a class to be bad.
You can no longer say how favored and OP they have been, 'cause it isn’t true.
So I guess that just leaves you to insult and belittle.
I expected nothing else to be honest.
I don’t think many will dispute that. However, given the way both classes have been designed the last couple of years, if those classes were Tier 1 for any considerable amount of time, the game would have been unplayable to most. Maybe some people find Hunter, Warrior etc to be more obnoxious to play against, but they’re in the minority. That’s just the way it is. Random might be fun to play for some, but its not fun to face for the rest of us.
This is precisely why I have posted so many times about the state of spell heavy classes.
The last few (three, four?) years have been nothing but janky win conditions and nothing else.
it’s not fun to play and it’s not fun to lose to.
And when the gimmick gets nerfed, the two classes rot in the bottom tier for the remainder of the expansion.
I don’t know enough of Priest to say what they need, but I think that mage could stand a return to it’s original stall and tempo decks.
But the whole point of the statistics & charts is that, no, the amount of time classes spend at the top of the meta really is NOT evenly distributed at all. Not even close. Paladin has had like 5x as much time in T1 as the worst classes.
Also, for all the constant whining on the forums, Priest hasn’t performed at a Tier 1 level outside of top 1k Legend since before the launch of Ashes of Outland. And that’s in no small part because of the hated way it’s been designed until now; just play endless weak cards until your opponent runs out of resources. That’s why it’s an inconsistent class in terms of performance. It’s an entirely reactive class.
Now this is the type of post that I would like to see more of in this forum imo.
Its EXTREMELY informative, and helpful to a lot of HS players whom may take the time to read it.
Speaking of time…
@Aegaeon This may have taken quite a bit of time to collect this data, and to write up the post…
I sincerely commend you my friend for doing so.
