Big spell mage is completely broken and needs nerf ASAP but for some reason devs just ignore this deck.
What decks have you been using to try and combat them?
According to HS replay, the worst match up for BSM is pain warlock, which is a BS deck of its own to be frank. It’s actually the current number 1 deck of the meta, probably because it beats mage so hard.
Other decks beting BSM are, still according to hs replay, elemental mage, token hunter, pirate DH, evolve shaman, flood paladin.
Welcome to aggrostone, the game. You want fun, long game, a battle of value and wits, you will not find it here.
Here, the battle you will find is shenanigans vs aggro. Value decks are dead and buried. Really sad if you ask me.
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I’ve given up trying to figure out the answer to that question. You won’t find it on any of their social media accounts and you won’t find it on these forums. I feel like these guys are just waiting for the announcement to abandon ship and start looking for other jobs. Maybe they are already because they don’t seem to give a damn about this one
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It’s not being ignored. This upcoming week is their balance patch week. There’s a patch schedule they largely stick to. I can pretty much guarantee you that you’ll see at least a nerf to Skyla on Thursday.
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Something tells me a skyla nerf will still leave a lot of people complaining, because while the specific sklya turn gets nerfed, BSM will still have the sea shill discounts and conman repeats. Some people run surfopod, some don’t, but it’s still another way to jank. Alternatively they run orb. Win rates will drop a few % which on paper balances things out, but the general play pattern of “look at me jank something huge… wanna see me do it again? And again?” will continue piss some people off.
It’s not just the tourist legendary that gave BSM a huge boost. The actual rogue cards play very nicely with mage too (moreso than pally, who people tried to do stuff like repeat earthen or myself I tried to repeat the 7 mana aura)
Oh, it’ll continue to frustrate people when played, but blizz has largely tried to avoid killing decks with their changes. It’s not like druid Marin scams became any less frustrating when blizz gave them some taps downward.
Any nerf to the deck will impact its play rate pretty noticeably, as people scoop up their dust on Skyla and then wait and see if it’s worth recrafting later.
A Skyla nerf would probably delete the Surfalopod version from the top of the ladder at minimum, I’m not sure how the orb varieties will hold up. It kind of depends on what the meta does after.
That would be dumb or at least dumb if it’s done in a blanket way of the type “just kill the card or those decks in general”. The problem is not that card or even that the deck is playable; it’s how it warps the meta around the way it is countered when it’s played a lot (and it’s played a lot because mages are obscenely popular whenever they get a playable deck (because their Lore is the most inoffensive so they’re always popular in all of Warcraft games));
and it warps the meta around it in a bad way because the CLEARLY BEST WAY to counter it is to use OTHER fast aggro decks even when they are SLOWER fast aggro decks so we’ve reached a point that it’s almost impossible to play a dozen games and not encounter at least 6 or 7 other players being pain locks and pirate “whatever” .
They don’t have to nerf Skyla; they should find ways to change the character of the deck to not be both fast and be killed mainly by other fast decks; PS the argument of VS “that all 5-cost cards that are enablers are overpowered” is embarrassingly bad because they didn’t even prove all those 5-cost cards are equally good.
No, the problem is CLEARLY that card.
https://www.hsguru.com/card-stats?archetype=Big+Spell+Mage
Notice how skyka’s card stats make literally every other card the archetype is using look bad?
That’s why Skyla is going to be nerfed.
The balancing makes sense only when it’s done on decks (not cards); there’s no reason to touch anything on a deck if it can’t win games; that deck wins some games because the entire deck wins them.
And that deck winning games is not the problem; it does not win the MOST games (in terms of win rate for an individual); the problem is that it warps the meta to be obscenely fast.
PS I’ve talked before that card stats are contaminated; they depend on the other deck cards; PS2 it’s subjective if a very fast meta is “inherently bad” but I tend to think it’s too dull.
The meta has adjusted a lot in the two days to deal with BSM and the deck was on the decline yesterday:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/hearthstone/t/tsunami-on-turn-5-ends-the-game-game-is-broken/135434
This ^ is by far the most common bad matchup for BSM that I encounter.
Yesterday, between Gold and Diamond, I faced very little aggro outside of some Painlock, Flood Paladin (a couple of matches), and Elemental Mage (if one considers that deck to be aggro). I get the impression that a lot of players would rather not play aggro. Are players tired of playing aggro?
Smeet’s version of BSM is designed to stave off aggro while it sets up a Tsunami combo or goes into control mode to get big value out of Orb in the later turns. If I encountered a lot more aggro, I would probably switch to his version of BSM.
If they nerf BSM this week, I hope they also make adjustments to some of the tier 1 decks as well.
The decks are currently performing pretty crazily well, even in top 100, mage is EVERYWHERE.
The split form of the deck (Surfalopod vs orb) seems to have started choking out each other’s weaknesses, so they now very clearly need to be nerfed.
Yes, BSM is hardly the only thing in need of balance adjustments.
That’s probably a good discussion related to the concept “it’s subjective if a fast meta is bad but it might be dull”; the default mage deck warps the meta to be obscenely fast because not only the best counters are fast decks: it’s beaten even by fast decks that are slightly slower than it; if anyone wonders why: those “slower fast” decks have way more reliable synergies and the mage is just more clunky so it often gets its combos late.
Yes they probably are tired of playing aggro; though I wouldn’t call it exactly tired; it’s probably closer to being bored.
Experienced players are probably feeling limited on a very fast deck; they understand it too well; it has no secrets.
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Pain warlock is a thing in standard rn? That… sounds mathematically impossible but maybe Imployee of the month really was the miracle worker every warlock build was looking for
The new flashy broken thing always take too long to nerf. Miniset just launched. Dont screw with sales.
Dont worry new set is coming in a few months. New unbalanced stuff incoming so we will get something new to complain about while blizzard goes “Ooops, hmmm…didnt see that coming” for the 14th time.
I’m not sure but they have a similar win rate to any other top decks at Legend. Also it’s actually been fun to create decks that specifically counter them and see them rage. It’s not that broken when you realize this. Probably does need and will get a slight nerf though.
I don’t think you tried everything there is to try, then xD
Try “Lynessa Paladin”
Painlock was tier 1 even before Imployee of the month
It’s a cool card and sounds great for painlock, but my winrate with and without it in the deck is pretty much the same xD
The deck just plays differently with it (becomes slower, more control-ly)
here it is
ht tps://i.ibb.co/dQcKGTv/pain.png
It’s true that it’s easy to counter it. But it has a caveat; you won’t counter it without changing your entire archetype in most cases; e.g. I was playing a mid range combo shaman deck and it was absolutely oppressed by the mage (even when they were misplaying); it was just easy to get any fast deck because the default mage is just bad against almost ANY fast deck (including slower decks than it).
That creates a situation that the speed of the meta is off the charts; in most cases you will encounter just pain locks and fast pirates which is boring to half of us; it’s best that it’s NOT nerfed and instead its character changes to not cause that side effect on the meta but they’ll probably take the path of least resistance and either kill the deck OR make a new strong deck farmers will switch to counter.