Been toying with pure spell mage. Deck is fairly dependent on Keyboarding into cards that cost 4 or more to keep up tempo. You really can’t waste keyboard usages on cards that cost 3 or less if you can help it.
Spot the difference is needed for a turn 4 tempo, then turn 5 you Cross Stitch or play a combo of cards to set up inspiration, turn 6 either Manufacturing Error or Blizzard, Turn 7 either inspiration (4 or more summons) or Firelands portal. Yogg mainly be used as a last resort or if you wanna YOLO and go for a win. Only run one copy of Sunset due to its cost. Of course, Projection is the ultimate last resort card when you are out of options.
Use Hidden Objects, Flame Geyser, or Cheap Spells from Primordial to survive early.
Mage is in a tough spot ATM. Not really any way to scale up minions early on like many decks right now and limited removal options to keep a board form getting out of control in a hurry against them.
I haven’t given up trying. I am still working on a minion less Mage deck. I liked that deck back the first time it came around. I think it has a build in there somewhere.
Yeah, I wasn’t exactly inspired by the all spell mage cards. Their impact is too low compared to running key powerhouse minions.
For example: Sif…
I think that in general mage is better off running a deck similar to old rainbow mage with a few new cards, rather than trying to make a new deck idea, because the cards they got this set don’t really build one that’s strong enough.
Elementals are fair and predictable, which is bad in this and probably every future meta based on this Dev team’s design trends.
And all spells have no real payoff. It wouldn’t surprise me if the mini set gave them something like reaper’s scythe, and then we are all just scratching our heads yet again as to why blizz only releases half of a package with a set launch.
Something like:
Arcane conversion
4 Mana spell
Start of game: transform up to 5 minions in your hand or deck into spells that summon them.
(On cast) Deal 6 damage
Arcane
Then the projection orb gains the ability to summon minions as well, and set up very nasty things.
I lost four straight games with it and moved on.
Perhaps you are right, and a miniset will salvage it somehow.
I’m not hopeful.
I have waited a very long time for team 5 to at least admit they keep the class weak intentionally to control play rates.
And you’re right. Elementals are fair, and that’s why they cannot win.
Well, they have no problem letting other classes be strong for a period though.
Mage, and to a lesser extent , Priest, both get this treatment, and have now for years…
But; I agree, a miniset done correctly could improve the deck to playable.
Not really. They generally stomp everything breaking a 15-20% play rate the next time a scheduled balance patch happens.
The tier they are at doesn’t really matter much. Sometimes it’s a tier 2 deck being overplayed and ruining the experience. Sometimes it’s a tier 1 deck, and the nerfs drop the play rate, but keep it in tier 1/2.
The only time stuff gets ignored these days is when we are a few weeks out from the next set, as they usually won’t push a balance patch once reveals start up.
But yeah… the mini set structure kind of makes it tough to tell what new deck ideas will work, because they annoyingly frequently massively support a deck when the mini set launches.
If sludge lock had the mini set cards from the start, they probably would never have been buffed.
well, I know I am the perpetual voice of negativity, but I wouldn’t expect much for mage.
Unless the community were to get up in arms , I doubt they will do much for the class.
When it is good, then it gets played too much to suit team 5.
DK always had that whole split between multiple archetypes. It wasn’t just 1 DK deck dominating the meta. When a single DK deck does get that kind of frequency, it does get nerfed. DK was frequently nerfed until it started sucking for most of the last year.
Warrior also never got a consistent foothold at those play rates before they did their last patch of the rotation year.
This is true, but it doesn’t change the fact that some of the classes don’t have a combined popularity of 5% with all their decks and together with each other, let alone 15% alone xD
So if the devs really nerfed popularity instead of (perceived) balance, this wouldn’t be true, but it is
They usually do it by deck, not by class, especially with regards to DK because the different archetypes might as well be different classes in that one.
DK would have had to be unplayably bad across the board for its launch year to keep the 3 archetypes combined under that benchmark.
They stepped in whenever frost or unholy took over. Blood never quite was able to be strong.
It wasn’t T1 when it got any of those buffs. It didn’t get to tier 1 until the mini set of showdown.
After it got there, it was still played less than plague, and it never took over the format.
Now I guess it’s maybe stronger? I’ve been having less issues with it as highlander DH since the rotation, but we haven’t even had enough time to get decent data on the meta, and the first balance patch hasn’t happened yet.