Fire mage variant is mostly just good on ladder because it forces people to not play the game whatsoever, frost is the actual version that just has consistent control
But really any version of mage lock is going to be good, you just complement each other, it’s not like you can just blame one spec for their synergy. You also can’t pick and choose the argument that a specific comp is the only reason a spec looks good because people generally try to make that same argument with assa rogues although I disagree that they only have that. Also it’s inconvenient to do the same when you’re mentioning specific comps for other classes as well as counters (a few that aren’t even very popular on ladder or nearly non existent like Turbo).
MLD isn’t really the only destro comp that there is, but it just is a staple comp with a ton of synergy. I mean really the times I think people struggle super hard in match ups as destro is like I said stuff like shadowplay or wld, which I mean those don’t really bring much support to the destro especially when you consider they’re bringing pmuch the exact same CC DRs you have as a destro and since you normally have a Rdruid anyways it just becomes like a non-existent support class. Although even shadowplay I still think actually has chances at beating some melee cleaves too.
But other melee like rogues, rets etc give a good enough window.
While I agree they were not bad I think mage lock synergy still always existed because Thugonomicz was still successful with it even at that point.
But it wasn’t just the lack of demon armor, it was that season 1 was actually very fast paced overall and destro had no tools to survive. Then they significantly lowered everyones damage AND gave these defensive tools. That’s how we had the late S1 meta and all of BfA S2 become so damp. The weak specs got incredible defensive tools, more offensive pressure, while everyone else got much weaker offensively too instead of keeping things the same and not changing anything.
For a lot of people anyways I generally think it’s more problematic when stuff like mages, destros, rogues etc. are super braindead because those are normally the classes that have high potential with extreme control and also have expectations to have higher skill caps, but the floors have been dramatically reduced. I can still notice a good destro can make a huge difference but many of the destros that are active don’t have to do this and I’ve noticed it really demotivates a lot of high end players from even enjoying playing ladder when the counter play for those types of destros is just doing nothing whatsoever the entire game instead of being able to stomp someone worse than you in like 10 seconds
I: have no idea who Jay is or who you are nor do I care. Keeping this one short since it’s off work hours. You’re just getting this response out of the kindness of my heart and pity.