The title. And I’m not even one calling this expansion garbage or claiming that quests are completely broken. HS Replay shows Quest Mage at a 49.55% win rate since balance patch in Diamond through Legend. Ok that’s fine. However, if you look into played win rate on specific cards, Cram Session has a 65% played win rate. On a 2 cost card. That gets discounted often.
I get that the quest is easy to complete. I get that ignite coupled with the spell damage completion bonus is insane. I get just conceding as soon a mage plays their second Incanter’s Flow.
But the fact that Cram Session exists, tying card draw to spell damage, is what really makes this deck nearly impossible to deal with once the quest is completed.
You’re not wrong. This is why I feel changing the quest reward to +2 Spell Damage from +3 Spell Damage might just be enough to make it…reasonable? 1 less card from each Cram Session and 2-3 more burn spells to kill the opponent, might slow things down just enough without Warsong Commandering the card.
I don’t think Mage, Shaman and Warlock rewards are supposed to be “dealt with” once played. I’d be hard pressed to agree that a card is a problem when it’s the specific fact the quest is way too easy to complete that makes the card busted.
I absolutely agree that post-quest Cram Session is essentially Quest Mages wincon right now. However, given they are at a sub 50% WR even with this, it would be tier 4/tierless deck without it and, IMO, it’s absolutely not fair to nerf it without some corresponding buff and I don’t know what that buff would be outside of re-working their other draw cards (cough, cough, arcane intellect is trash).
And as Iz points out, cram session has been around for a while and in a lot of decks without much of a problem. It’s the quest that makes it so strong because you need not stick a minion to get the spell damage benefit. Prior to quest, it’s always been a combo card (since 2 mana draw 1 is absolute garbage).
You make a good point with this. It makes me wonder on the thought process on this one. They had to know how easy the mage quest would be to complete, so why make the reward so effective?
I would imagine they grossly underestimated how powerful permanent spell damage would be. I’ve played various Aegwynn builds since the card was created for Core, and when it works, it really works. There are tons of ways to disrupt Aegwynn though, and sometimes you brick, either drawing a spell when you need a minion, or a minion when you need a spell.
Blizzard devs may have looked at Aegwynn as a failure in that respect, and thought the quest reward would be balanced since Aegwynn never tore things up. Turns out 3 spell damage instead of 2 AND zero ways for your opponent to prevent it is really, really good.
Yet another post calling for a nerf that would destroy mage in tier.
Spell damage is powerful. It also is not anywhere near the best deck this expansion, nor was it pre nerf.
This forum never changes. If mage is any good, at all.
It’s too good.
Played win rate is a terrible measure of a card’s fairness. Il’gynoth, Battleground Battlemaster, and Charged Call all have abnormally high played win rates in their respective decks.
Is that because those cards are overpowered? No, it’s because they are generally only played once the player is ready to finish the opponent off (ie. finisher cards). Cram Session is generally held until the Mage quest is completed.
Also, cards cannot be judged in a vacuum – classes have strong and weak cards unique to the class. I don’t know how much you’ve played this expansion but most of the quests are unanswerable by design, with Mage being no exception.
I feel like any non mage player wouldn’t be happy with any card that wasn’t 10 mana do 1 damage to enemy minion do 12 damage to your own hero.
We get called on card draw, while warlock, demon hunter and rogue draw over half their deck by turn 5. Called on mana reduction when the octopus and even worse the warlock rod are a thing…it never ceases…its always nerf mage to teir 32 ignore everything else.
Sooooooo holding Cram session until the end to draw the cards needed to finsh the opponent after quest completion is different from holding the cards you mentioned…you know until your ready to combo them for the win…is different how? So DH it’s perfectly acceptable to be able to burn through your entire deck early to get your combo win pieces and then play them, but its not ok to use a card to hopefully draw your win condition later in the game…makes perfect sense…mage, not allowed cost reduction or card draw, must slowly draw entire deck, while trying to survive to give everyone else more then ample time to OTK them on turn 7…got it…
Much less the fact that they added an infinite burn spell that gets stronger and prevents fatigue to go along with it. Ignite by itself is a pretty game breaking card in many ways in that you can make some decent use of it without the quest in a world where the warlock quest doesn’t exist. When you’re adding in a quest that uses several of its burn spells on completing the quest it’d be relatively ok because it might run out of steam eventually, but the quest itself is still strong and could easily kill someone once completed.
Mage quest is a bigger picture, whole package has too much synergy and gap filling. Cram session refills the lost hand from completing the quest, ignite refills the lost burn, and the quest itself provides both of those the extra power needed to be more relevant.
Warlock quest on the other hand is simply just a “what the hell were you thinking” style of breaking the game. They’re not even on the same page, but both need to be addressed.
And how would you design Mage so that it can win, yet still be fair to all of the decks that you claim it oppresses?
Mind you; every single winning mage deck in eight years has been nerfed.
You cannot use any of those ideas, as they were tried and are too good.
I’m all ears.
