Why would you say its a backup plan? Its a finisher like almost every deck in hearthstone has had for a few years now. Elemental decks have finally got one and now they’re viable.
I had never really played elemental decks until recently, but I agree with others here.
Elemental decks play much like Pally token decks to me.
Were the decision mine, they would be limited to Shaman and Druid with Mage returning to spell based decks as it’s long suit.
I know Water Elemental has always been a thing, but I dislike the idea of an entire deck based on elementals in mage.
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Because almost all decks in recent years have it. I’m not necessarily against it being taken out, but just look at the control decks and you understand why this inevitability exists.
Mage survives if a lot of other things get nerfed as well. If it’s just Lamplighter and something like Concierge only as nerfs, Mage might as well just accept only having a Tier 3 deck in Spell Mage.
BSM needs a LOT of work. It first needs all the aggro to get toned down about 1-2 turns minimum. It also needs Warrior to get hit hard, Painlock and Handbuff Paladin all to be hit extra hard.
THEN, it needs to hope Plague DK doesn’t pick up in popularity IF all that happens.
So, to put it bluntly, it doesn’t look good for Mage.
Mage’s only hope is that the Lamplighter nerf only affects Rogue and the change is extremely minimal to Elemental Mage. Lamplighter getting Elusive added to it would be the ideal nerf it’s looking for.
This is all based on what I see in the statistics for matchups for Mage.
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They don’t want control decks to drag out games for an hour anymore. Not to mention their competition (that is destroying them) has control decks but games have a definitive ending with those types of decks. They are just looking to make the game more mobile friendly for those types of decks now as well.
It’s better just to tell the truth. Mage cards are excellent Druid cards.
Tourist mage simply fails to finish games. If they could buff sunscreen to give 2 attack instead of 1, it would be great, but I doubt it will happen.
and big spell mage can wait for the next expansion or probably next rotation.
I think that’s obvious and goes without saying. EVERYTHING would be an excellent Druid card because Druid is king of maximizing cheap play patterns. Whatever another class does, Druid could do it better if it had their cards. Druid is a highly catered to class for the devs. They can do pretty much everything and their one true weakness (board clear) is often filled in with a powerful neutral.
Unfortunately, Mage is about to find out what it’s like to be Priest in that it’s likely about to get cards nerfed thanks to the shenanigans of another class.
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It’s interesting. I took the elemental Mage deck and retooled it with Watercolor Artist to draw out the Tsunami’s and get them rolling mid game for a huge board swing. It’s a solid competitive deck until you come up against bloody Zilliax. At that point the whole thing falls apart because you cannot use all the freeze to manipulate the board anymore. They gave them all this freeze and it’s pointless. Feels like Moorabi Shaman debacle all over again.
1 mana drinks were predicted to be problematic when combined with the concierge anyway. They really should rethink whether they want drinks to be played more than one per turn.
Well, they did it on purpose. They knew the interaction. They knew Druid had major access to spell damage. They knew it would cost 0. They knew it would replay everything again if need be.
The real problem is they made the moronic decision to have Druid tour Mage. For the most part, everyone else got a class to tour that doesn’t compliment their own class all that well and you do something different. Druid getting Mage was like THE class they shouldn’t have given them access to.
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There are interactions in the early turns that are quite strong as well, but they don’t draw as much attention because they aren’t combos. These decks will terrorize both the standard mode and the wild mode until the last day of this game’s existence and will still cause an absurd number of nerfs.
And that is even disregarding that Astalor costed 8 mana and was impossible to be played twice on same turn unless you were playing Druid.
I think druid just complements everyone well, because they’re the closest to a jack of all trades class.
If they tour a minion class like pally, they go token/buffs.
If they tour hunter, they can bolster overall aggro mix of minions and direct damage, or they get some beast flavor to their greedy strategies (e.g. guardian animals)
If they tour priest or warrior, they get better stalling/removal so they can reach their degenerate late game easier/more consistently.
If they tour rogue, it’s probably like mage now where they do combo-y stuff with lots of damage potential
Locks, DH, Shaman, and DK can go many different ways depending on which themes those classes are given to druids. Could be sacrificing life for power (which druids can mitigate with healing/armor), could be hero attacks, could be overload (we’ve seen that with lightning bloom), and… DK is often just repeating what others have done (broadly the runes are control, tokens, and burn) so druids can work with those too.
Personally, I think the whole tour mechanic wasn’t a great idea, especially when factoring in Druid. Most of Druid’s cards only become good because of their consistent ability of ramping. In fact, I would make the argument that most of their cards are lackluster and had to be designed that way because of their unique ability to ramp.
is better than "stock pile armor and wait for oppoentn to die by fatigue damage " type of decks we had years ago
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ditto this 100%
5char
mage will survive donb’t worry
the low mana cost of lamplighter is the issue IMO. 3 or 4 seems bad when rogues can return them and lower it even further.
2 or (more) 8-10 blasts ignoring taunt in the same round is a bit much lol.
Even if Lamplighter is nerfed to make it a higher cost, Mages will still run the elemental package because of how many “if you played an ele last turn” cards they now have access to
the 4 mana deal 7 dmg, with a huge body of stats to deal with.
the field of 3/2s that every single time I play against them they always play one turn after another. SO LOL if you dont have two field clears on the ready.
Its such a braindead “battlegrounds” like playstyle. No real strategy just make sure you play an ele each turn, even if Lamplighter costs 6, they will still play Brewmaster and bounce it for another use.
We all know Lampy will be nerfed not so much because of Mage, but because of Rogue and Sonya interactions.
Im totally guilty of it, getting 4 lamps on a single turn because of shadowstep and Sonya is how you say… a little insane.
But then again we also have 0 cost 15 dmg spells so i personally think the devs dont have a clue how to balance this game without doing a hard reset
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All you said is true but i still have one argument.
If paladin can get away with it anyone should be.
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