I play Mage and I definitely wouldn’t disagree Conjurers is terrible design. The high roll turn 5 Giant -> Coin -> Conjurer is extremely difficult to beat, as well as the Khadgar play. Unfortunately however Mage is indeed tier 3 and the class would crumble without Conjurer.
I would very happily trade it for some consistent early game, like a mage Duskbreaker or a Hellfire or something like that. Our early game is very weak in a rather tempo heavy meta.
They don’t seem to want us to have much early game, as our Duskbreaker/Hellfire is a turn six 3/3 with a condition.
Blegh.
You’ve been playing a lot of mage lately. What kind of early game would you like mage to have?
Compared to my favorite class, Hunter, it is minion based with buffs. (Dire Frenzy, Tundra Rhino, Houndmaster, etc.) Would you like to see early game minions, early game tempo, early game AoE or some combination of it all?
What do you think would be the best early that fits mage but is also refreshing, fun, and balanced? Also, given the release of RoS, do you think pre-nerf mana wyrm would have been too much?
A good one-drop would be a start. Mana wyrm getting destroyed was never really compensated. Their early drops in general are just very poor.
It is evident that Hearthstone designers knew exactly what was necessary to make this meta as it is. We lack dependable early game closure. Power bump occurs on turn 5, causing perceived threat to occur on turn 4. Classes tend to have strong tempo turn options on turn 7. This all pivots on Dr. Boom maintaining relevance. The sum of all these decisions resulted in a high amount of variance in class strategies, which lends to the new “specialist” grandmaster tournament. I like the attempted support of diversity. The only mechanical problems with Hearthstone that I often mention is the manipulations of AI.RNG in all things supposedly randomized, the seemingly secretive use of bots, and mech creep.
Maybe I can help you not be so lost, typically the decks that have high skill caps have lower winrates than they should. This is the case with Conj Mage, the deck has been warping Grandmasters meta for the last 2 weeks.
It probably takes the average person 100-150 games to be playing this deck optimally, so when taking that into account, the win rates are way below what the potential win rates would be. If you took the win rates of everyone who has played > 100 games this deck would be tier 1.
I guess your experience doesnt include wild at all. People win against big priest all the time and still despise it to its very core and curse its name under their breath. heck big priest is a mantra thats core to the wild community at this point
, despite a large chunk of wild players playing aggro and having favored matchups vs big priest.
I think Mage is actually okay as it is. We have NO healing now and not even Ice Block to fall back on, so the “glass cannon” characterization fits quite well. Not all classes need to have a good-statted 1-4 mana curve as long as they have tools that compensate to a proper degree elsewhere.
Mana Wyrm honestly might’ve been a bit much at 1 mana with Mage’s current toolkit. Sneaking it into Cyclone Mage would’ve been a MASSIVE boon to our early aggression and give the deck more reasons to be threatening within the first half of the game outside of luckily drawing Giants, draw and CC. The consistency would likely have pushed the deck a bit too far.
PPL hate mage because leave a giant up instant die to 2-4 giants next turn. Even though hunter is better deck ppl hate getting blown the eff up by huge monsters
Id actually be curious to see the data of strictly people who have 100+ games with cyclone mage. Watching APX stream the deck, there are a lot of counter intuitive plays, and a lot of different things to consider because of mana break points with Giants due to both minions on board and hand size.
I think I can pick up decks fast, but cyclone mage looks legitimately hard to make optimal decisions. Aggressive Rogue decks seem like the only decks truly favored from watching the deck play out.
There’s always a segment of players that think they are winning when their opponent isn’t playing any cards and think of tactics like Conjurers calling with Giants are “cheap” (some even get higher on the horse and call them “dishonorable”). These are the same people that tend to use life total as a sort of inverse scoreboard. Needless to say these people probably wouldn’t be happy unless they win literally every game.
Then there are people that simply don’t like big swing turns in their games. I’m kinda in that camp. I think big swings are fine, but they should be reserved for later turns and take some work to set up, otherwise you squeeze out midrange, value decks which (imho), should be the backbone of the game.
In that sense, turn 4-5 is too early to have that big of a swing (even if it is a best case scenario), because it limits the number and types of decks that can operate to extremely aggressive decks that can be above curve on turn 1-3. I find those decks boring, and I’d like to be able to bank on having a little more time to develop my decks’ strategy. But when you have lots of board flood and early strong moves like CC mage, thats non viable.
I don’t know if my perception that CC mage is distorting the meta into a more aggressive set of decks is accurate though.
I’d say the main thing that players hate about mage, is their ability to swing games, from out of left field. Oh, the Druid has a full board with 1/1s? Let’s pull that arcane explosion, I got with Magic Trick, and kill them. Or, my opponent is low, let’s Tome of Intellect, and get a spell that damages right to face.
Mage is hated, due to the fact, it never seems fair. At least with most face decks, you know exactly what they’re playing, and what they have in the deck, while mage is more of, “I’m going to pull seven spells out of my box, and hope it goes well.”
People rage, because they have no idea how to deal with the unfairness of RNG and the heavy reliance of the mage.
Actually, Celestial Emissary and Explosion can be combined for 4 mana. (Normally nobody sane would actually run this for the combo, but it can be done) And the fact remains, that both Duskbreaker and Hellfire both damage your own minions/side of the board.
The more traditional clear is Spellzerker + Shooting Star or Cosmic Anomaly + Shooting Star. (5mana duskbreaker)
Fair point. You can do it with Emissary and shooting star for 3, but to 3 minions.
Not wanting to revive this discussion but to add my views.
The debate on balance and player experience here is very subjective in a way.
When we talk about balance in forum, we as a community never could agree on a common definition, and in a way the same with player experience.
Company B utilise the players statistics as the primary factor to makes changes to the game. The class representations, the winrates, (and future impact with new cards vs old) and maybe others that didnt come to mind. The players feedback forms the supplements to facilitate the decision based on that statistic.
Thus, we see popular played decks with high winrates being nerf as they don’t want a class to be over represented. While we also see deck that have low winrates being nerf (I suspect) due to its the deck’s polarisation effect (maybe ironically also based on winrates).
In the overview, the statistics is the primary tool they use to determine if balance or player experience is obtained. How that statistic is being interpreted on is another discussion.
Win rates don’t matter when your own personal experience is having your minions frozen for the entire game while your opponent plays 30 generated cards, drops 8/8s for virtually nothing and then instantly multiplies them and swings face because your board is frozen and he can ignore it. Obviously i’m exaggerating a little bit on what actually happens but that is basically how it feels. I mean the fact that you don’t feel this frustration I suppose is good for you. I think most people don’t enjoy seeings 8/8’s multiply for 3 mana on the other side of the board though.
I would say Naga Sea Witch fits the bill here. Sure, Nagalock was a pretty good deck and its not the official reason we were given, but it is rather coincidental that after 6-8 months of the Naga/Giants interaction being deemed “fine” that after just a month of an advert on reddit being posted they suddenly decide its gotta go, right?
And if you look at the official reason, which (paraphrased) came down to “producing board states like that, that early, before enough answers are online, is not cool”, then CC Mage might not be safe despite its T3 status. I’m not gonna claim its as consistent at those early big boards as Nagalock was, but is it too consistent for standard, with less tools available to deal with it? Maybe.
It’s true that it’s hard to pilot. But it was only dominant on Week 2 for GM, a very weird week since deck submissions happened within one day from the nerfs.
This week its play rate tanked in favor of Warrior and Rogue (and Hunter in APAC). It was bizarre to hear feno say “Mage is best” while simultaneously playing and winning with Rogue.
APXVOID exclusively plays Mage and consistently hits Legend with Tier 3 Mage decks, the average forum poster is not facing him, but rather the average player with an average win rate <50%.
Sidenote: Watching the feno game I noticed that he never drew Spirit of the Shark, his opponent did both times and feno won both games. I think it’s one of the most over rated cards right now.
Ahhhh yes - defending stupidly broken decks using junk data from some worthless website. The data supplied for this game from these pimply-faced teenager run websites is of no value. Its a simple snapshot - like a politicial poll where you ask 100 people who they are voting for and then try to apply that to millions and millions of voters. Same thing. Its useless, 100% useless.
Mage is pretty busted. They can generate like 20/20 stats from a 6 mana card. Nice job, Blizz. Another fine effort regarding testing and QA. ** golf clap **