Secrets. Why they need to change

Multiplayer Discussion
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Just to put a proper space with some grounding to the discussion, as there are some merits to be found in taking a look at the secrets for various classes.

Soo, on first glance some secrets are very similar. Mostly Ice Trap, Oh my Yogg and Counterspell.
functionally those are very different though.

first we look at Ice Trap - it returns the spell to hand and enhances the cost. So it does not affect the value of the spell, but the tempo of the play.
Counterspell on the other hand removes the spell form the game, thus affecting value and tempo.
Lastly Oh my Yogg - now in an ideal world the thought process probably is that exchanging one spell for a similar costed one does not affect the value, but in practice it just comes down to pure RNG how it affects tempo or value. The card is really badly designed and should never have been printed.

SO that is just one example where the Mage secret clearly is tuned for value.
And to make it clear, other classes also have quite a lot of secrets that aim to generate or destroy value.
What makes Mage an outlier currently though is that there´s no good option for tempo in the mage secrets.

The common theme in most of the actually used secrets is that they aim for tempo. E.g. Rogue would have tools to generate/destroy value in plagiarize, shenanigans and shadow clone - but almost noone plays those.

And for good reason, Value was taken away as a valid strategy with UiS for the most part. So while Mage secrets currently feel terrible for the most part - it´s not necessarily because they are bad, but mostly because the (heavily tempo focused) meta does not allow for them to be good.

And this leads to a huge conundrum for mage, as for 3 mana making the secrets aim for tempo is very hard, as by definition you spent 3mana for sth. that may not trigger in the next few turns, so you always start with a massive tempo loss and to make up for it the trade off needs to be probably unreasonably huge.
This is much better to balance around at 2 mana where missing the turn is still hurting, but far less than at 3.

So i think while it´s somewhat classic for Mage-Secrets to cost 3 it really limits design space too much and if we don´t want to wait for the meta to one day make value a thing again so mage can have actually playable secrets

My proposal is to just get rid of the class specific mana-restrictions for secrets. They really serve no good purpose. Ofc if we have mixed secret-cost it´s much easier to find out what secret is played.
But in practice you know already which secret is played anyway in the current meta, as there are very few any sane person would put into their deck. So to hell with that arbitrary chains, let´s have some 1 or 2 cost mage secrets for a change.

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Are secrets not terrible unless cheated out in general making the price point largely irrelevent?

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The cost are there for thier class. If you play wild you can craft secerts to play in your deck so they’re already there. Mage is more expainsive for good reason a balence for other powerful spells.

There’s minons that can cast secerts with no cards for any class can use along with specifc class. To remove cost is to spam there is no need for spam in this game. It will be heavily unbalence with no cost added to them. You can use a 6 minion to reduce the cost or a 2 mana spell to reduce 1 mana of the card cost. That’s these cards exist.

Its just like saying all spells for each class have zero mana because the cost for them serve no purpose.

By looking at the collection on the website you will know which secerts are played just by playing against them PVE and PVP. You will know when it will come out and the cost. How the secert behaves. To get rid of the cost just to find out what secert it is tells me you don’t want to improve the game instead having a cheat sheet so you don’t have to learn how to play against it which the game teaches you how to play against in PVE.

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i wouldn´t say that, there are some secrets worth playing for the cost, but ofc most archetypes want to “cheat” with their respective tools at least a little.

The common theme though for the secrets actually worth playing is that they have a high chance of netting you an advantage asap. E.g. Ice Trap is worth playing for 2mana if it protects your board and allows you to push more dmg, same for oh my yogg. Now counterspell can´t do that because mage unfortunately has no board to protect.

Similar Dirty tricks is most of the time just 2mana draw 2 for the Rogue, so a pretty good deal.

And the main problem with the costs are more the outliers of paladin and mage, as 2mana seems to be the sweetspot where you can design alright secrets to provide either value or tempo, so it can fit in any meta, while paladin and mage heavily go in one direction and therefor are easily rendered useless depending on the meta, albeit paladin less so as tempo is pretty much always valid in hearthstone.

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It’s all guff to me. I have argued for mage to be given other classes’ key effects in the past (since all of theirs are being shared) and have been told: “That doesn’t go with mage. It is part of “x’s” identity.”
But it’s fine for everything to be plagiarized from mage, made better, or at least more tolerable, and then be given to another class.

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Kirin For Mage, a 3-cost 4/3 with Battlecry: your next Secret costs 0, was in the original core set. Mad Scientist, the 2-cost 2/2 with Deathrattle: play a Secret from your deck, came in the very first expansion. Very early on, Blizzard set the standard of having to cheat your Secrets into play to have them be truly good, balancing them from the very start as potentially a 0-Cost play.

I’d be for changing every Mage secret to 2 Cost. Even the Wild-only ones. There’s even an argument for 1. I agree that Secrets are one big design fail.

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I love Secret Mage in Wild. Even today it is still viable, all the way to Legend if you want to grind it out.
Wouldn’t making the Secrets free in Wild make the deck too good, and if not, why?

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Secret Mage isn’t even considered a viable deck in Wild anymore. It was, once, maybe a year ago.

I’ve probably played 400 games of Wild in the past 4 months and I’ve seen Secret Mage exactly once. I remember it because I had an abysmal draw with Odd Hunter and lost. Odd Hunter is kinda weak to Counterspell — countered spells don’t advance the Questline.

I don’t think the Pirate matchup is as forgiving.

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I still do really well with it:)
I have hit Diamond 5 every month without really trying and that since i quit grinding Legend.

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i don´t have any idea about wild, but there´s just two questions to consider.
Do you often play the secrets for their intended cost?
If you get some more mana to spare can you translate it into more tempo?

If the answer to both is no it´ll have very little effect.

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I think the answer to this is yes many times more than not. it’s why Secret mage is still playable in wild even now.

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personally they should just get rid of all secret and quest and the weapon slot and go back to being an actual card game

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