Shaman is basically just better mage

Multiplayer Discussion
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The current Shaman decks floating around are nuts. They are both incredibly strong, consistent, and have minimal bad matchups. Every game against shaman starts and ends relatively the same. They start by trying to take the board, and with cards like wildpaw cavern and other early game tempo cards, it’s usually pretty easy unless playing against control. Even against board clears and such the Shaman will most likely get some incidental damage in. This is where i want to pull my freaking hair out. Play a couple 1 mana spell damage minions with overload synergy (what were they thinking), and just start blasting. Ive taken over 20 damage from a shaman’s hand before turn 8 way too often. During United in Stormwind everyone complained because mage was killing people from hand…well…Shaman is doing it too. And if you try to pressure them with a strong board it gets frozen. I know beast druid or taunt druid is the top deck atm but Shaman has the most insane matchups and functions as an aggro/middrange OTK depending on the list.

So why does shaman get all this damage from hand? Its good too, starts at 3 damage. Mage gets spells that deal 2 damage, and the 1 mana spell damage minion is a joke compared to what shaman gets. They freeze your board and slap you with a bunch of spells from hand with spell damage. By far the most frustrating decks to play against are, any shaman and Kaz druid (I know i play it, but its so lame to just hyper ramp to kaz). Am I the only one who feels Shaman is basically just aggressive mage? Except better?

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Mask of C’Thun + Parrot + Dawngrasp is a pretty broken combo, but Shaman’s burn is overtuned.

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Look at how expensive mana wise those cards are though. Shaman’s are way cheaper and have additional effects and synergies.

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Shivering Sorceress can reduce the spells’ cost quite a bit. But yes, Shaman’s burn is insane.

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I am convinced Mage will be screwed until Incanter’s Flow rotates out. That card has crippled the class in terms of design.

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No surprise there, Shaman is just doing what Mage did in the past but without the hate and the nerfs that come with it .

If Mage was the one still doing this people would be having meltdowns in this forums …just goes to show the gameplan is fine as long its not Mage doing it.

Hypocrisy at its best.

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To be fair mage is a little too flashy at everything it does.

This is why i kinda would like a general review on most mage spells.

While the gameplan itself has nothing wrong the fact that devs choose conditioning mage decks to specific draws is frustrating for both sides.

Stuff like ignite for example would be completely Fine with base damage 3.
Why?

To bring the possibility of decks that are actually consistent like an aggro mage deck.

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No way in hell thats ever going to happen in fact the only reason Ignite has not been nerfed yet despite insane pressure is because it was Iksar idea to make the card and he toke it personal.

Make no mistake that card is still a high priority nerf to many regardless of Mage standing thats the dumpster right now.

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And i not give a damm about it .

The point is that once done and clean most people gonna actually understand.

Why?

To deal with stupidity you need to make people notice they’re wrong by force.

Sometimes argument just isn’t enough.

If anything i should do a actual list with reasoning just to see people going crazy.
It would be fun to see their reaction atleast.

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Every class has damage from hand that was screamed about in mage.
Shaman comes with stall that mage used to have as well, but was taken away.
This game has doubled down on hypocrisy in the past few expansions.

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Like rogue “Preparation” curse, I can’t wait for that horrible card go away and we finally stop getting insanely overpriced spells because of it.

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People are saying Shaman has busted burn spells, but it’s really not better than Mage at that. It’s good at burning people out because it has Lightning Bloom, 4x Frost Nova, and insanely good card draw (seriously blizzard, mind going back and sharing some of that draw with the other classes)?

The burn spells themselves are all pretty fairly priced mana->face damage conversions, even accounting for cheapness synergizing with spell damage. Frankly if Mage had Shaman’s freeze/parrot package and Lightning Bloom I think it would be just a better burn deck.

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Oh yeah. Swindle and Secret Passage sure are overpriced…

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“Shaman is basically just better mage”

Nah, shaman is shaman. Spells and burst are just as much a part of their thing as things like elementals, battlecries, totems, the occasional murlocs, etc

Lightning bolt has always been around.

Right now shamans are usually running the 2 mana deal 3 frost spell and the 3 mana overload deal 3. That’s 5(+1 overload) mana for total of 6 damage across 2 spells.

Shamans in classic/basic could run frost shock and lava burst. That’s 4(+2overload) mana for 6 damage across two spells. Heck, since more of the cost is in overload, it means technically a shaman could squeeze even more damage in the first turn.

Then there’s windfury and doomhammer for non-spell burst.

When you include non-spell burst, almost every classes has them, both back in the day and today (like… druids had FoN+SR, so they didn’t need 20 mana or kaza or dropping huge boards to kill you). Helps that there used to be more CHARGE minions or classic Alex cutting people’s health for a follow up next turn.

So nuking isn’t a solely mage thing. Or a solely shaman thing. And it’s not like mages can’t nuke today. Mozaki is still around. Quest mage, while nerfed, is still around. You might even build up pings or meme with aegwynn spell damage. Try to cast mask 4 or 5 times between parrots and varden. Go real meme with the dragon. etc

The only difference is how well you’d perform in a competitive environment.

Given the above, where were people being sympathetic to shamans (or other classes) when they were worse on the meta? Where were the threads about how shamans used to be “just worse mage”? Right, it’s only when the shoe’s in the other foot that it’s a problem.

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eh, i came here just to see what garbage deck mage has atm that people would use to make the “yo mage is fine, look, this trash mage deck somehow made it to tier two in this website” argument but can’t find any.
Maybe i should just give it more time? or mage doesn’t even have a standard archetype people try atm, even at least until they realize it just won’t work?

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Druid and Shaman has so many good decks because of Lightning Bloom while Mage has been in a bad spot due to a horrible Year of the Phoenix. With rotation, Shaman and Druid lose a ton (granted shaman still keeps their freeze package) while Mage keeps everything in their Year of the Gryphon decks except Mask of Cthun. While being a pretty significant part of their decks, I still expect Mage to be one of the best prepared classes for rotation.

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Fixed that to better reflect facts.

If shaman was played as much as mage it would have already been nuked just like mage.

Idk why mages don’t just start playing shaman, but here we are.

Agreed. They need to remove the discount cards and do a balance pass to make mage have accurate cost spells for what they do. Now it’s op when it gets discounted and poop when it doesn’t. It’s impossible to build a consistent and fair deck with extremes like that.

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Gee it’s almost like they should have nerfed Cram Session instead of double nerfing Flow :thinking:

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Those cards cost lot’s of Mana to play. and we can usually only play one per turn. That doesn’t seem very broken.

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Fixed that for you.