This is a common theme on the boards. I don’t get it. The two most frustratingly OP builds I’ve had to play against in my time in Hearthstone have been Mage builds, specifically DK Jaina and the 2021 Questline Mage.
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Because none of those were actually OP. They spent most of their time in Tier 3, sometimes being in Tier 2, always with a LOT of decks noticeably outperforming them.
Frustrating to lose to (which is plenty valid emotionally speaking) is not the same being overpowered.
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Also I’m pretty sure 90% of those threads were posted by a single person.
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It is somewhat valid that a deck cannot be so utterly annoying to play against that Blizzard lose players because of it. Even if the win rate is only 50%.
I think it was stated recently on twitter by a dev that the feeling of decks weigh a whole lot in terms of neefs.
Pardon me if i’m wrong, but didn’t mage just have like 2 recently day 1 powerful decks with like Initial deck of lunacy mage with 2 mana flows, 2 mana lunacies into 4 mana refreshing spring waters that were often draw 2, gain 2-4 mana with each flow?
Sure quest mage definitely has never been the Top tier Number Uno like Aggro Taunt druid or high level handlocks floods or nearly as much quests or maybe a few Spriests prenerf in the warlock meta. But it’s every other deck getting nerfed and for the times it did see play, i heard like nearly 30-50% of the meta on Versus reports were mage at some points of times between Barrens and Day 1 2 mana flow quest mage fiascos before people figured out watchposts and robes of protections and refined decks.
One of the articles that wrote about 2 mana Deck of Lunacy, 2 mana flow, 4 mana spring water at time of launch was going “Deck of Lunacy is the most powerful card in Standard and it’s not even close. We’re talking a winrate of 69.3 percent when kept in the mulligan according to the stats on HSReplay [At launch].”
I think people complain since it’s a class that actually gets powerful cards that are strong enough to get nerfed, while being cheap and new player friendly and flashy but often denies gameplay to the other player. Which in turn helps the person piloting it. If you’re less dependent on your opponent interacting with your win condition than draw rng or just the player order, it makes a appealing deck for new players to pilot and feel powerful with on a budget.
But at the same time, the deck is mostly designed to be flashy for the player playing it, but skips on the gameplay for the other players by freezing them, denying turns, and nonsense stuff.
Aggro taunt druid overall is still a sleeper and overtuned deck though.
I’ve seen a couple games where i haven’t minded the gameplay but looking at statistics, and doing a knee jerk test response of removing mage from the hsreplay meta statistics to track a likely outcome of a nerfed deck vanishing showed a already Tier 1 deck like aggro taunt druid jumping from 56-58% Gold WR to like broken for the general playerbase 66% WR when quest mage is taken out.
I’ve been in games where just the combination of value, and protective taunts with snowbally cards have led to aggro taunt druid making even unaoeable or unsolvable boards on the turn 3 if you even just lax a turn with great consistency and do stuff like play 1-3 mana greyboroughs with 5 wide boards and cloned 2 mana 2/3s that enable so much mana cheating.
Honestly i think there’s a fair point, i think for quest mage people dislike the gameplay against it as it denies the experience of playing hearthstone, being frozen, doing nothing and getting otked.
But i think if you were to retune it, instead of focusing on a balance nerf you might actually want to focus on the non core cards people just hate.
Like nerf the 0 mana freeze, maybe tweak the quest rewards so it’s not all fuel or as rapid. It’s supposed to be 9 cards, but mage finding 2 more cards that often cost 0-2 make it faster than it should. Maybe they could ‘rework’ ignite to be like a torch, stronger on the first cast. (Like a 2 mana deal 3 fire, but only 1-2 reshuffles of maybe 1-2x copies of a 3 mana deal 4 that doesn’t shuffle anymore. )
I feel like Aggro taunt druid might be worth keeping a very close eye on as well, either through techs or balance. Maybe a face hunter style ‘nerf’ where the deck is slowed down. I don’t mind the deck existing, it seems okay to play against for such a strong deck but it’s definitely overtuned synergy as far as mana goes.
Strong or not, a aggro deck shouldn’t be able to make unsolvable 5-7x strong boards with a greyborough zombie with cards protected by divine shield by like turn 3-4 before your cards are even online or playable even for other aggro or control decks. It’s definitely underplayed at some ranks but it’s extremely powerful and consistent, and a quest mage nerf shows that it, a already strong deck with one few bad matchup being a 20% overplayed quest mage, could go up from 55-58% wr to 66% wr (at current popularity levels), means it could very likely become a completely broken god tier if mage was nerfed.
People sleep on it, but winrate wise, i think if Quest mage was ever nerfed, Aggro taunt druid could still use a balance tune. Not to kill the deck, the gameplay is fine, the winrate is just coming together too high.
Maybe some changes like the 2 mana 2/3 Your taunts cost 2 less.
To
A: 2 mana 2/3: Your Taunt Minions cost 1 less.
B: 2 mana 2/3: The next Taunt minion you play this turn costs 2 less.
C: 3 mana 3/4: The first Taunt minion you play a turn costs 2 less.
Maybe Greyborough could take a look as well, a zombie tree with taunt and the wide boards is just really too sticky for a 5 drop. Maybe a change like
A: 5-> 6 mana, same effect
B: Greyborough now instead of giving deathrattle, summon greyborough, now summons a 2/4 Taunt budding Sapling with “Taunt: At the start of your Turn, transform into Greyborough”
If the sapling is killed before it can turn back into Greyborough, it could allows counterplay to remove the card before it snowballs. even then a 5 mana 4/6 taunt + conditional 2/4 taunt for 5 mana isn’t that bad. It’s like 6/10 of stats for 5 mana with a small hurdle and lets other decks recover. Aggro taunt druid already has very powerful synergy and does too well being aggressive vs control, and aggressive and explosive vs other aggro decks.
It’s not flashy but it can very quickly snowball and take over a game with unaddressable board states as early as turn 3 and i think Quest mage is… ironicaly enough… One of the few bad 20% popularity matchups for it.
So, i feel like Quest mage has had enough time to shine, but any nerf to just quest mage with a already Tier 1 Aggro taunt druid could risk making Aggro druid spike to S± tier winrates when seen on hsreplay. Just banning quest mage almost doubles the winrate margin on some brackets.
So both decks should be balanced together. As games shouldn’t be about making unwinnable board states before the opponent can meaningfully choose to interact. A nerf to the freezes just for quest mage, focused instead on winrate but just the cancer part of it might be good. That way you could still smash mage like Garrote rogue, and for Aggro taunt druid, reducing how fast it can quickly snowball to 5-7 wide boards on turn 3-4 followed by Arbor up can creates a extremely consistent deck that can snowball very quickly before non Warlock aoe answers are even available. Warlock aoe hits 5, everyone else’s only hits for 2-3 damage for the 4 mana curve. If that.
You need at least 4-6 damage aoe on turn 4 ± greyborough to counteract a aggro taunt druid board, and it’s just too good against other aggro decks and other slower control decks.
It does, I just feel it’s important in discussions to understand the difference between “frustrating” and “overpowered”.
The two are not the same.
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YMMD
Priest are easy answer for that but got countered hard by q mage thus less priest appearance…
Mage just has too much firepower and/or freeze tactics. Definitely needs a nerf.
This is clearly a troll thread.
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The stats say that priest is a counter to quest mage which seems pretty reasonable for obvious reasons.
I think Rukanth’s thoughts on ignite needing a change are wrong, it’s basically just apm mage 2.0, people like to play it, but the amount of setup that is required to have a chandler + 2 sorcerers apprentice on the board is quite heavy. At least from a wild standpoint because I have no idea how it is in standard, but the wild meta is not solved in my opinion, people are saying like just spam 1 cost spells in hunter and win etc, just play pirates etc etc, but these have counter play options that don’t even really weaken those decks, so I expect the meta to change quite a lot. For instance people have already determined that control is strong again and that playing reno is close to 100% winrate into quest hunter.
@EvilWarden, you Troll!! EVERY! EVERY expac, Mage is at the top of tier outcomes. EVERY game in Wild, Mage shuts down pretty much every single class, ESPECIALLY Priests. PRIESTS have NEVER had a showing in tier lists.
I don’t feel sorry for the trolls in this thread who have enjoyed Blizzards love for Mages and literal hate for Priests.
I have said this for 10 years and I will say it for 10 more. Blizzard is 100% prejudice of Priests because it’s Blizzards representation of Western culture in spite of the fact that the majority of Westerners don’t practice Christianity. Mages have been OP for as long as Hearthstone has been on the market. They ruin most Tavern Brawls, they have an abundance of low cost, high powered spells, are given heals AND have spells that should have been deleted long ago because they prevent other players cards from being in play while building stronger and stronger presence with no counter. The majority of Mage cards resemble NOTHING of Warcraft lore and only facilitate the wide spread perception of the toxicity that exists in this corporation. Meanwhile, relevant spells like Mind Blast have been X’d by Blizzard. Ask yourself why you believe Priests are so underwhelming and I do mean really think about it.
The people in this thread who are expressing upset have no pity from players who prefer other classes. Players who prefer Mages are simply whining because of the stupid in your face classes that don’t give Mages so much of a free pass as they have had since the start of Hearthstone.
No pity.
They aren’t.
It’s Just that mage was really popular during most of hearthstone history and they normally counter Priest archtypes.
The overall problem with Ignite is that it undermines the weakness that burn decks are supposed to have; finite damage. The secondary problem is that Mage can draw it’s whole deck in 8-10 turns and have nothing but pressure after that. So a spell that shuffles ever increasing damage into the deck is problematic when there’s quickly no deck left except for that.
While the infinite loop is certainly annoying and meme tier, that doesn’t mean the competitive version doesn’t run Ignite or that Ignite doesn’t have a powerful role in the deck.
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Its because there are many very loud and whiny mage players on this board.
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I remember you the person that said Hero power Freeze Mage was going to be realy strong lmao.
Never change keep on coming the Mage hate.
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Ironically the problem with hero Power mage is basically in it’s core.
You can print as much support as you want but as long as you not have another hero Power permanent buff to give the deck consistency and late game scaling It Gonna still be trash.
Poison rogue eat mage like breakfast but bad against other deck lololol
That’s a poor way to attack someones credibility…
I’m not the 1st one to be wrong on this forum. Many people say things they fear will happen but they don’t. In fact it happens ALL THE TIME, remember when everyone was freaking out about glide?
I really hated freeze mage because it sucked to play against and there was a deck brewing at the time i posted that i feared would take off. I was wrong and that’s OK, lol.
For the record i don’t really hate mage but i do get tired of the constant complaints on the forum from mage mains. Mage players just seem like entitled one trick ponies tbh. You generally don’t see the same whiny complaints from other classes mains that are under preforming. Mage is popular i get it, it was my favorite class when i first started hearthstone too until i branched out to other classes.
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Im confused lol, also sadly i have elephants memory and you have also said in the past you hate it.
Nothing wrong with disliking a class ,backtracking and changing ones opinion like you would a shirt on the other hand doesnt sit well with me .
Like i said keep the hate coming just dont act all surprised when you get called out on hypocrisy.