Can this PLEASE be banned? There is zero reason why mage should be able to play 50 copies of ice block and completely lock you out from winning. This is not a fun play pattern, it’s low skill, it’s incredibly consistent, and it sets up an OTK. Card has been talked about for literal years to get banned in the format .
It’s fine if mage is allowed to stall with any number of the freeze cards at their disposal, Solid Alibi is tolerable, but watching mage cast Ice Block literally every turn is just dumb. Aggro decks don’t have space for ETC, control decks can’t push lethal damage fast enough before they get their OTK. This would objectively be a hit that almost everybody would unanimously agree is healthy for the format. I’m on my knees begging, praying.
The higher I climb in legend the more I am facing these annoying mage decks and it’s making me want to put it down.
It’s probably the one deck in Wild that infuriates me more than anything else. OTK druid is also pretty degenerate.
Design issue with combo decks in HS is that there’s very little counterplay to them. Half of them aren’t reliant on minions and so cards like Dirty Rat and Mutanis don’t adequately hit them and then you have ETC Band Manager which needs to reserve space for cards like Sticky Finger, Armor Breaker, and hand rip cards. Then you have aggro decks that can’t even run Band Manager because you waste one turn playing a 4 drop that does nothing and then another turn having to play whatever tech card. That and Reno decks are actually competitive so they need reach to get through midrange and aggro actually seems PRETTTTTTY balanced in the format even though it’s very strong.
Combo decks should be losing to aggro except druid can OTK by turn 3 with the right cards if going second (the reason why Crimson Clergy is banned – somehow Druid is completely fine), OR freeze mage just starts going off with infinite Frost Novas and Ice Blocks by turn 3 and by that time the game might just be lost from there. So the one counter combo decks should have just don’t function as well as they need to which completely shifts the format.
I’m top 800 legend in Wild now and maybe this is just the ebb and flow of my climb at this time of the month but I am facing almost exclusively combo decks and my WR has dropped significantly. Aggro doesn’t need buffed, combo decks (and by extension Ice Block) need to be addressed. Control and midrange decks could actually exist and the format might actually be really good. People hate to admit it but the existence of strong aggro decks is actually a good thing.
There’s like multiple cards in wild that can do damage on the mages turn. That’s a hard counter to infinite ice blocks. Tech one such card and hold onto it until you get them down to 1 life then force them to take 1 damage on their turn.
Simplest card to do this is the minion that does 2 damage every time opponent draws card.
Hard to say. I got to legend 3K in standard when I hit legend and then I hopped off because I was only getting 40 placements higher per win and I am not trying to grind to 1K. I don’t think I’ve actually ever entered legend in either format at anything higher than 5K because my MMR is very high.
Wild legend I entered this month at a little over 1K (I think it was 1026) and I’ve only played a couple games since yesterday when I hit it. I also screw around more in standard because the format is more forgiving in terms of deck viability. The other difference between Wild and Standard is that Wild you can test in casual which means any kind of experimentation doesn’t screw your MMR. Also sometimes you just forget to add things to your decklists and you don’t catch it until you’re in the middle of losing. I’ve made plenty of highlander decks that have an extra copy of something and all the highlander cards are offline which is basically a free loss but I catch that in casual.
Basically, if you are strictly business in standard I think the formats are probably about the same intensity to hit legend above 5K if your prerogative is placing and nothing more. Standard BECOMES more difficult if you want to home brew or play multiple decks because there is no adequate place for testing grounds. There might be an argument that because Standard is also more popular that there is more information being diffused and people are therefore more informed and better but at the same time the people who consistently place in Wild legend are ALWAYS the same people. You see them month after month, they have possibly YEARS of experience with the same decks, they have a lot of experience playing against the same decks as well.
Wild this year has an entirely different meta than it did a year prior and even last year the meta started to change. A lot of what’s being played is new and there’s space for new wild players to be successful. Right now is the best time for a standard player to pick a deck up for Wild and hit legend, IMO.
Not sure what you mean about testing and casual. Casual automatically matches with another Standard or Wild deck (or so I’ve heard that’s officially reported), and you can test Standard decks in Wild (I’ve accidentally gone diamond 10 that way (I do achievements and quests in Wild)).
Not sure if I believe this or not. Maybe it’s true but I definitely feel like I have played standard decks in casual and matched with wild decks. Either way it’s been a while since I’ve tested a standard deck outside of ranked. I’ve been playing a lot of the same decks since Festival of Legends and Badlands.
Also it’s not like there aren’t counters to freeze mage, the issue is that you can’t maindeck these tech cards because raw drawing them for aggro decks is extremely diminishing to your winrate and running ETC to tech one in basically is two turns of dealing no damage.
Midrange and control decks DO run Band Manager but there is no control deck in the meta right now (because combo decks just run them over way too quickly) and there are some midrange decks that basically accept they’ll also lose to combo but have a good chance of beating aggro.
Basically, midrange decks are only played during periods where aggro decks are popular. The last several years when combo decks were popular midrange was also an extinct archetype for the format. It’s really only come back this year. Basically, the answers that exist are good but the decks that can run them are either extremely situational or bad. Reno druid and reno paladin are the best we have.
And there are other cards that do practically the same thing as Ice Block in other classes.
The card isn’t broken by any means, but replayable effects might need limits.
If Ice Block was capped at once per game, SA could be completely unnerfed.
In true Blizz fashion they nerf around the problem instead of addressing it head on.
There are 5 cards which give your hero immune and 2 which give your hero stealth. Stealth is not as good as immune since your hero can still be damaged by not targeting cards and exists in a 4 cost spell and a 9 cost hero (the hero cannot recur by Tidepool Pupil). The other cards are minions which conditionally give your hero immune (such as on your turn) and require the minions themselves to be on the field.
The ONLY other spell in the game which gives your hero immune during your opponent’s turn is Time Out. The big difference between Time Out and Ice Block is (1) Ice Black has a spell type which matters because it allows it to be recurred through Magister Dawngrasp, (2) mage has access to Commander Shivara and Rewind and paladin natively to any way to recur previously cast spells.
So really the argument that there are other cards which give your hero immune is totally disingenuous. There’s a single, worse version of a card similar to Ice Block which belongs to a class that cannot be recurred. Moreover, Time Out cannot be mana banked since it is not a secret whereas Ice Block can be played many turns before it ever triggers, can be tutor’d, and can be generated via cards that care about spell schools.
Yes, there’s some counterplay to the fact that it’s a secret whereas Time Out is absolute and in that way only Time Out is better but mage would never trade Ice Block for Time Out because there are too many synergies which allow it to be cast over and over and over again exclusive to mage as a class. If Time Out had holy as a spell school then maybe there would be more points of contention as to which one is better because then it’s a debate of versatility (Ice Block) versus potency (Time Out), but that’s not the world we live in and if Time Out were a holy spell then I imagine that would also be a huge issue since then it can be tutored by a number of paladin cards as well as generated via anything that cares abut spell schools or the holy spell school specifically and THAT would make it competitively viable and then Exodia Paladin suddenly becomes an obnoxious deck that zero people like playing again.
I have played a number of games where mage generates an ice block every turn until they get their OTK. Want me to post a whole recording of this dumb stuff that’s very well known and why there are legend decklists? Post a screenshot of you being legend in wild.
Hate to interject on a thread talking mostly about wild but… Ice block has been smuggled back in to standard under our very noses! Dreamplaner Zephyrus can APPARENTLY give it when you’re pulling on extravagant tour. Just thought that was worth mentioning. Also technically we do still have an answer even without anti secret tech. Secrets MUST trigger on opponents turn, if the killing blow was from them drawing a bomb or plague at the start of their turn it doesn’t trigger
Issue with this is mage decks aren’t going to fatigue. By the time the game has stalled long enough for them to even get to fatigue they’ve won since they’ve already established the OTK. Bomb decks are also purely casual.
If Ice Block is a problem that needs to be addressed, then there are also about 25 other cards in Wild that need looked at too.
Wild is Wild until it’s mage. This forum never changes.
