I think that anybody can easily agree with the Hong Kong situation and the need to set things right there. Those (like myself) that have a critical eye on this "boycott Blizzard" wave are just pointing out that what Blitzchung did was simply in the wrong contest and the actions taken on him and the casters, even if harsh, are something that should have been done to keep safe the neutrality of a gaming tournament.
If literally no actions were to be taken, anybody could decide to just use the visibility offered by such a massive event to make political proclamations. How messy could that become? How enjoyable would it be for a viewer to get flooded with such statements every time?
Of course China's money had an importance at how fast and how hard Activision Blizzard acted (it will be naive to think otherwise), but enforcing a punishment on those who broke such an important thing like the neutrality of an e-sport event was the right thing to do.
Why didn't Blizzard ban the three US hearthstone collegiate players who held up a sign in support of Hong Kong one day after Blitzchung's banning? If this was about setting a standard that no political messages are allowed, why weren't they punished at all?
If you look at the actual PR statement by blizzard, they repeat over and over again that Blitzchung and the casters were punished for not "keep(ing) the focus on the game". https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/blizzard/23185888/regarding-last-weekend-s-hearthstone-grandmasters-tournament This is a preposterous standard to apply. If this were the line then Frodan and Amnesiac should have been yeeted a few weeks ago for discussing the player's love life: clearly of no relevance to the game.
No, no no, y'all taking an obvious lie at face value. Come now. Even if you blithely assume that you're being given the real justification, at the very least then you have to concede that the standards are NOT being applied evenly, and draw your inferences from there.
Even if there was side-corporate influence in the punishment, rule-breakers acted knowing their consequences, and that's it.
Pretending Blizz should have acted condescendingly, because of just cause, now that is naive. And honestly unfair.
If corporate decisions are dictating if/when players get punished for the same "transgressions" (and again I have to stress that Blizzard has put such a broad clause in the contract that they can ban people at their discretion), then clearly the rules aren't being applied evenly.
At that point the rules just exist to deflect legal liability, they're not a reflection of any sort of values the company pretends to uphold.
If they saw fit to ban blitzchung, they should've done the same to the US players. They didn't, so they're not enforcing their rules, which makes it perfectly reasonable to question whether this decision was made in order to comply with the rules..... or if the rules were bent over backwards to justify a corporate/political decision.
I don't see what's "condescending" about holding companies to the values they espouse and cutting through their PR doublespeak to point out hypocrisy and lies. Expecting them to apply the same standards to all players is the opposite of "unfair".
That's false. The changes were obviously made with chinese censorship standards in mind (no overt sexuality, blood and bodyparts). They tried to pass it off as 'making the game more child-friendly' because telling western audiences that their card game was changed to comply with chinese diktats would've gone over as well as a lead balloon.
The sad thing is that people fell for this obvious lie, as it goes to show how far the west has gone down the slippery slope of censorship and puritanism.
I think that anybody can easily agree with the Hong Kong situation and the need to set things right there. Those (like myself) that have a critical eye on this "boycott Blizzard" wave are just pointing out that what Blitzchung did was simply in the wrong contest and the actions taken on him and the casters, even if harsh, are something that should have been done to keep safe the neutrality of a gaming tournament.
If literally no actions were to be taken, anybody could decide to just use the visibility offered by such a massive event to make political proclamations. How messy could that become? How enjoyable would it be for a viewer to get flooded with such statements every time?
Of course China's money had an importance at how fast and how hard Activision Blizzard acted (it will be naive to think otherwise), but enforcing a punishment on those who broke such an important thing like the neutrality of an e-sport event was the right thing to do.
Why didn't Blizzard ban the three US hearthstone collegiate players who held up a sign in support of Hong Kong one day after Blitzchung's banning? If this was about setting a standard that no political messages are allowed, why weren't they punished at all?
If you look at the actual PR statement by blizzard, they repeat over and over again that Blitzchung and the casters were punished for not "keep(ing) the focus on the game". https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/blizzard/23185888/regarding-last-weekend-s-hearthstone-grandmasters-tournament This is a preposterous standard to apply. If this were the line then Frodan and Amnesiac should have been yeeted a few weeks ago for discussing the player's love life: clearly of no relevance to the game.
No, no no, y'all taking an obvious lie at face value. Come now. Even if you blithely assume that you're being given the real justification, at the very least then you have to concede that the standards are NOT being applied evenly, and draw your inferences from there.
I don't want to sound cocky, but the distribution of upvotes and downvotes on this matter is disheartening.
It's like the majority of people here in this community expects you can LAWFULLY break the RULES about neutrality, if you break them for a good reason (and get away with it, with no further action being taken).
It's like saying it is lawful to rob if you are poor, and everyone should let you.
Consequently, it implies allowing anybody at these events coming out and explicitly support some kind of political agenda. Can you imagine the absolute mess?!?
Partying for a rebel, as i do in this case, is absolutely legitimate, but that can't mean one also expects no consequences, especially in a Neutral, international environment, that has nothing to do at all with said rebellion.
I hope i misunderstand people's mindset.
I think it's absurdly naive to take Blizzard's face-saving PR statement at face value and assume that they're JUST applying their rules and nothing more. The fact that they backpedalled on Blitchung's prize money and suspended the casters instead of firing them goes to show that the actions they took initially were not necessarily the result of following the rules to the letter.
And lets be very clear here: the "rule" that blitz violated is an extremely broad cover-your-own-ass clause which blizzard can invoke at any time to punish a player for anything. Had they so chosen they could have kicked Thijs for drawing smiley faces on oranges last week after he beat Orange. It's not a bleeding coincidence that the ONE time Blizzard comes down like a ton of bricks is when someone brings up politics in the 100 acre woods.
If you genuinely believe this had nothing to do with Chinese censorship, I have a bridge to sell you and it's got Heffalumps and Woozles and everything.
Great statement by kibbles. I hope more employees and contractors come out against Blizzard's decision, not to mention consumers. Blizzard wanted to send a message to chill speech, but instead we can send them the message that acting like the proxy arm of the chinese government is not a good look.
The problem you're having if you took a deck that you ALREADY KNEW was a RNG meme, and expected to enjoy playing it when you don't enjoy playing the game that way. I don't understand the reason for the thread tbh. Literally pikachu face meme, "I can't believe the random cards are bad" :O
This is exactly my point. If you're playing a meme deck and your goal is to win, you're not going to have fun. Playing an RNG meme deck is fun because of all the stupid stuff that can happen from playing it, not because you can win.
Being a fun wacky deck with lots of randomly generated cards isn't synonymous with being a bad deck. Burgle rogue, cyclone mage and quest shaman are or have been top competitive decks that rely *heavily* on randomness, discover effects etc.
If you want to define "meme" as "unplayably bad" only to argue that unplayably bad decks are unplayably bad and people who enjoy winning should steer clear of "memes", congratulations on the tautology but you're clarifying exactly nothing there. Find me the people who are clamouring for a "fun" losing experience and I might take this argument a bit more seriously.
It's a response to Blizzard banning Blitzchung and sacking two casters for coming out in support of the Hong Kong protests, essentially. Blizzard is sucking up to the chinese government so Flash put up a symbol of defiance and derision.
I was pretty sure that was a time-limited offer, but according to the HS wiki to this day, the first WotOG pack you crack open has a C'thun in it.
That said, the power of the card has petered off quite a bit in comparison with what's possible in 2019 hearthstone. C'thun is slow and a bit underwhelming.
Seriously though I agree - it's much more fun to have some RNG memes like Academic Espionage, Arch-Villain Rafaam,or Chameleos in an otherwise okay deck that generate unique, often hilarious wins than something that is a total "coin flip with a double-headed coin" where you're almost guaranteed to lose if the stars don't align for you.
I think one reason I was so surprised and triggered by Renounce Darkness is that blizzard has gotten so much better in recent years at balancing these wacky random generation cards and making sure they actually have a home in (semi)-competitive hearthstone. I really enjoy the fact that HS lets us play cards that aren't in our starting deck, I think it's probably hearthstone's biggest advantage over say, Magic. I think Discover is the best mechanic in the game. Renounce the Darkness bothers me because it's such a step back from all of the progress we've made since it got printed, back to where you had unexciting tempo cards that won games on the one hand and useless meme cards on the other.
I'm not saying they should have released Darkbomb instead, but at least with Lakkari Sacrifice you'd be able to build a deck around your meme.
Did anyone notice Pooh bear at the bottom of the page?
Actually, that winnie the pooh is at the bottom of every page. It's a little weird.
The Chinese president can't stand being compared to Winnie the Pooh. AFAIK the name is censored quite heavily on the chinese internet. I assume Flux put Winnie there as a silent protest against Blizzard tacitly enforcing chinese censorship on their platform.
Anyway, I feel Blizzard was justified in punishing him. He signed a contract, he knew what was up, and he did it anyway. His fault. Blizzard needs to send the message that they will not tolerate anyone misusing their platform to spread their political ideals, and that is fine. Also, they do not want to piss off China, which is another very justifiable thing.
However, I disagree with the severity of the punishment. A one year ban just seems extreme, and all prize money being confiscated was just the cherry on top honestly. It sent a good message that Blizzard will not tolerate these clowns, but they went down too hard on him. What he said wasn’t particularly offensive anyway, it was just “down with the government” or something similar to that. And before anyone asks, the casters were in on it as well, thats why they got fired.
Just because a person or company has the right to do something doesn't mean it is right for them to do so. Yes blizzard had a contract that allowed them to yeet players for whatever reason, but you can be damn sure they wouldn't have thrown out a player for, say, coming out against global warming or pro gay marriage.
Throwing Blitzchung under the bus may be legal and even understandable, but it is still a cowardly affront to the principle of free speech. Personally I think more people ought to vote with their wallets, because it's the one tool we have to make corporations, which are amoral entities, behave morally.
If there is no price for acting like a tyrant's lapdog then eventually most companies will do so. If there's a price to pay for immoral actions then suddenly morality becomes a part of the business calculus.
It's a trash-tier meme which is why I don't understand wasting a card slot on Renounce the Darkness for this event. A bunch of people jumped down my throat for being anti-fun or w/e for making similar comments in the reveal thread, but this is exactly the point I was getting at back then too: why waste people's time with unplayable "fun" cards when losing isn't fun and there are meme cards that actually pack a punch.
Different people have different goals when playing this game. I personally enjoy winning and climbing, so I play the best decks to rank up. Others don't like the standard meta but enjoy being competitive, so they'd play Wild or Arena. And some people have fun memeing with cards like Renounce. Different people are allowed to have fun in different ways, which is likely why you were being flamed. Nobody can tell you what's fun and not fun, if people enjoy memeing and don't mind losing, then good for them. I absolutely despise Highlander Mage and have a hilariously low winrate against the deck, while to others it's a complete meme. It's all based on perspective, you can't tell someone how they should percieve something.
This is such a tiresome argument. Yes, individual differences exist. Yes, players prioritise different things. Yes fun is subjective.
And yet, AND YET, somehow blizzard devs are able to come up with a general picture of what "fun" entails to most players and stick with it. It's no wonder that the latest version of Renounce the Darkness, Academic Espionage, is a hell of a lot stronger, not to mention more synergistic with the overall burgle rogue theme, resulting in a playable meme deck rather than a handful of random discounted class cards.
The notion that it's impossible to generalise about what amounts to fun for most players of a specific game, just because someone, somewhere actively prefers losing to winning or w/e, is silly and obtuse. Your argument would have held more weight if you had made it on your own behalf rather than in name of some hypothetical player who may or may not exist.
As much as I liked WC3/TFT back in the day, I find the notion of a direct remake repulsive, lazy and creatively bankrupt. Instead of a clone with updated graphics, I would have liked to see a sequel with new units, maybe even a new race. Heck, if they really wanted they could still make this WC4 game backwards-compatible with WC3 by including all of the units, maps etc. from that game and adding a "play WC3" button.
It's a trash-tier meme which is why I don't understand wasting a card slot on Renounce the Darkness for this event. A bunch of people jumped down my throat for being anti-fun or w/e for making similar comments in the reveal thread, but this is exactly the point I was getting at back then too: why waste people's time with unplayable "fun" cards when losing isn't fun and there are meme cards that actually pack a punch.
What's particularly depressing about this for people outside of china is that it shows how your rights can be violated by foreign countries using (tech) companies as proxies, on the premise that companies have the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason.
You probably should have included that Blitzchung was banned for voicing his support for the Hong Kong protests. Those cowards at blizzard, unsurprisingly, left that out of their little PR statement.
I'm not surprised at all to see Blizzard kowtowing to Winnie the Pooh. It's not like this is the umpteenth example of them bending over backwards to accommodate Chinese diktats, as with the recent art changes. From a business perspective, it makes perfect sense why they'd sell their principles for a slice of the chinese market, but it's still depressing as hell.
I never said either was played a lot, but that doesn't mean they both aren't still strong decks. Big Priest has dropped in favor because it loses often to the currently preferred Mage deck, Secret Mage. But both Big Priest and Time Warp Mage with Vargoth and Arcane Giants can still win games. When I play that deck I often win burning my opponent down before I even need to play the Vargoth, Giants, and Quest turn.
And yes, the Wild Priest cards are overloaded with board clears. That was exactly the point I was making and applying to the discussion of Frost Nova and printing more mass freeze cards.
To be clearer on my BP comment, yes, the rez mechanic is what technically allows it to be a thing since you can rez multilpe copies of a single dead minion. However, not every game plays out so perfectly and you can't always get early minions on board. In those cases you often need board clears to survive until you can use the busted rez mechanic to set up a big board that your opponent can't deal with. At least that has been my personal experience playing the deck in the past.
I never said you said either of those decks are played a lot, which they are though. They're ridiculously overplayed. I said they were barely playable. i.e. not strong at all currently. And they never really were to begin with. Both decks never surpassed tier 2 because they're not consistent enough (especially big priest) and get absolutely slammed on by aggro decks.
The point I was trying to make is that big priest doesn't run many board clears, only six in fact. (If you even count Spirit Lash as a board clear.) They have a plethora of good ones, yet only these six make the cut. Which is why I feel that if mage gets more freeze cards for standard, wild won't be affected much. They will still only run 4-6 of the best freeze cards, and leave the rest behind.
If mage got another decent board freeze I reckon most OTK/combo mages would play at least one copy of it. It's a card type that isn't nearly as saturated as priest mass-removal.
I also don't think mass-freeze effects are quite analogous to board clears. It's quite possible that decks would run even more than 6 freeze effects, if they could, in order to lock minion-centric decks out of the game entirely with repeat mass-freezes against a full board.
I'm a bit torn on the issue. On the one hand I think mage's card do an excellent job at outlining the class identity and providing starting players with playable cards, at the same time I think a lot of these cards are so powerful that mage tends to receive rather underwhelming expansion cards year after year. Mage hardly ever gets good burn spells because Fireball and Frostbolt exist. Mage never gets any mass freeze effects because of Frost Nova, Blizzard and Cone of Cold. Mage sometimes gets decent AoE because frankly it doesn't really matter if the class has access to even more board clears, that role is already saturated by the evergreen set.
I definitely will use Flamewaker to stir things up! I have had it with all those quest decks and Aggro Priest. It is time Mage reclaims its rightful position: at tier 1! Be prepared to be finished off by fireballs and ragnarosses! Not to mention the potential of Sorcerer Apprentice icm with a Luna and this card to just gun them all down in one turn.
Or a Flamewalker being followed by a puzzle box? Do these spells count as well?
Flamewaker's condition is "after you cast a spell". That means the player playing a spell card from their hand, which puzzle box or Tortollan Pilgrim don't do.
However, as written, Unseen Saboteur ought to trigger Flamewaker if your opponent plays it against you with ole' walkey on the board.
Got to 10/2 not sure if I should try for 12 I got Reno and siamat and quite a good tempo core :/
You absolutely should carry on. After 7 wins you're guaranteed enough gold for a new arena ticket anyway, but with each subsequent win the prize pool gets a lot more stacked.
At the very worst you go 10-3 and buy a new ticket and concede two games there.
Look at other classicegendaries. Are they seeing play? No. Will they in the future? Of course! They'll be around forever, this is why they mustn't be buffed. Keeping the classic/basic set balanced is important. Right now I think it's a little weak and makes classes over rely on good expansion cards, which is exactly why warlock is in a tight spot. He also hasn't seen many great cards cause of his top tier hero power, but that's beside the point.
A 1 Mana armor card might make jaraxxus quite good Perhaps a minion that gives armor when cards are played? Or maybe a zero cost spell that turns Mana spent into armor? Or if you summon a demon gain it's attack or health as armor. Any of this is possible in the future and turns Jaraxxus into basically a card as good as Dr. Boom. Sounds fun to me!
Jaraxxus hasn't been a playable card in years. That's not just some weird fluke of the meta that will resolve itself automatically, it's a sign that the card has been left in the dust by power creep. Compare him to the recently nerfed Dr. Boom: they both cost 9, but in one case you gain 7 armor and your life points are left alone, in the other case your max health is capped at 15 and you lose all of your armor.
The cost of entering Jaraxxus mode is not proportional to the reward you get from it. Printing weird cards specifically to shore up Jaraxxus' weaknesses is not only transparently bad design, it'd be an admission that Jaraxxus is underpowered, at which point why not try to address that directly? "Keeping the classic set balanced" would necessarily entail an intervention when cards are chronically over- or underpowered.
If corporate decisions are dictating if/when players get punished for the same "transgressions" (and again I have to stress that Blizzard has put such a broad clause in the contract that they can ban people at their discretion), then clearly the rules aren't being applied evenly.
At that point the rules just exist to deflect legal liability, they're not a reflection of any sort of values the company pretends to uphold.
If they saw fit to ban blitzchung, they should've done the same to the US players. They didn't, so they're not enforcing their rules, which makes it perfectly reasonable to question whether this decision was made in order to comply with the rules..... or if the rules were bent over backwards to justify a corporate/political decision.
I don't see what's "condescending" about holding companies to the values they espouse and cutting through their PR doublespeak to point out hypocrisy and lies. Expecting them to apply the same standards to all players is the opposite of "unfair".
That's false. The changes were obviously made with chinese censorship standards in mind (no overt sexuality, blood and bodyparts). They tried to pass it off as 'making the game more child-friendly' because telling western audiences that their card game was changed to comply with chinese diktats would've gone over as well as a lead balloon.
The sad thing is that people fell for this obvious lie, as it goes to show how far the west has gone down the slippery slope of censorship and puritanism.
Why didn't Blizzard ban the three US hearthstone collegiate players who held up a sign in support of Hong Kong one day after Blitzchung's banning? If this was about setting a standard that no political messages are allowed, why weren't they punished at all?
If you look at the actual PR statement by blizzard, they repeat over and over again that Blitzchung and the casters were punished for not "keep(ing) the focus on the game". https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/blizzard/23185888/regarding-last-weekend-s-hearthstone-grandmasters-tournament This is a preposterous standard to apply. If this were the line then Frodan and Amnesiac should have been yeeted a few weeks ago for discussing the player's love life: clearly of no relevance to the game.
No, no no, y'all taking an obvious lie at face value. Come now. Even if you blithely assume that you're being given the real justification, at the very least then you have to concede that the standards are NOT being applied evenly, and draw your inferences from there.
I think it's absurdly naive to take Blizzard's face-saving PR statement at face value and assume that they're JUST applying their rules and nothing more. The fact that they backpedalled on Blitchung's prize money and suspended the casters instead of firing them goes to show that the actions they took initially were not necessarily the result of following the rules to the letter.
And lets be very clear here: the "rule" that blitz violated is an extremely broad cover-your-own-ass clause which blizzard can invoke at any time to punish a player for anything. Had they so chosen they could have kicked Thijs for drawing smiley faces on oranges last week after he beat Orange. It's not a bleeding coincidence that the ONE time Blizzard comes down like a ton of bricks is when someone brings up politics in the 100 acre woods.
If you genuinely believe this had nothing to do with Chinese censorship, I have a bridge to sell you and it's got Heffalumps and Woozles and everything.
Great statement by kibbles. I hope more employees and contractors come out against Blizzard's decision, not to mention consumers. Blizzard wanted to send a message to chill speech, but instead we can send them the message that acting like the proxy arm of the chinese government is not a good look.
Being a fun wacky deck with lots of randomly generated cards isn't synonymous with being a bad deck. Burgle rogue, cyclone mage and quest shaman are or have been top competitive decks that rely *heavily* on randomness, discover effects etc.
If you want to define "meme" as "unplayably bad" only to argue that unplayably bad decks are unplayably bad and people who enjoy winning should steer clear of "memes", congratulations on the tautology but you're clarifying exactly nothing there. Find me the people who are clamouring for a "fun" losing experience and I might take this argument a bit more seriously.
It's a response to Blizzard banning Blitzchung and sacking two casters for coming out in support of the Hong Kong protests, essentially. Blizzard is sucking up to the chinese government so Flash put up a symbol of defiance and derision.
I was pretty sure that was a time-limited offer, but according to the HS wiki to this day, the first WotOG pack you crack open has a C'thun in it.
That said, the power of the card has petered off quite a bit in comparison with what's possible in 2019 hearthstone. C'thun is slow and a bit underwhelming.
I think one reason I was so surprised and triggered by Renounce Darkness is that blizzard has gotten so much better in recent years at balancing these wacky random generation cards and making sure they actually have a home in (semi)-competitive hearthstone. I really enjoy the fact that HS lets us play cards that aren't in our starting deck, I think it's probably hearthstone's biggest advantage over say, Magic. I think Discover is the best mechanic in the game. Renounce the Darkness bothers me because it's such a step back from all of the progress we've made since it got printed, back to where you had unexciting tempo cards that won games on the one hand and useless meme cards on the other.
I'm not saying they should have released Darkbomb instead, but at least with Lakkari Sacrifice you'd be able to build a deck around your meme.
The Chinese president can't stand being compared to Winnie the Pooh. AFAIK the name is censored quite heavily on the chinese internet. I assume Flux put Winnie there as a silent protest against Blizzard tacitly enforcing chinese censorship on their platform.
Context:
Just because a person or company has the right to do something doesn't mean it is right for them to do so. Yes blizzard had a contract that allowed them to yeet players for whatever reason, but you can be damn sure they wouldn't have thrown out a player for, say, coming out against global warming or pro gay marriage.
Throwing Blitzchung under the bus may be legal and even understandable, but it is still a cowardly affront to the principle of free speech. Personally I think more people ought to vote with their wallets, because it's the one tool we have to make corporations, which are amoral entities, behave morally.
If there is no price for acting like a tyrant's lapdog then eventually most companies will do so. If there's a price to pay for immoral actions then suddenly morality becomes a part of the business calculus.
This is such a tiresome argument. Yes, individual differences exist. Yes, players prioritise different things. Yes fun is subjective.
And yet, AND YET, somehow blizzard devs are able to come up with a general picture of what "fun" entails to most players and stick with it. It's no wonder that the latest version of Renounce the Darkness, Academic Espionage, is a hell of a lot stronger, not to mention more synergistic with the overall burgle rogue theme, resulting in a playable meme deck rather than a handful of random discounted class cards.
The notion that it's impossible to generalise about what amounts to fun for most players of a specific game, just because someone, somewhere actively prefers losing to winning or w/e, is silly and obtuse. Your argument would have held more weight if you had made it on your own behalf rather than in name of some hypothetical player who may or may not exist.
As much as I liked WC3/TFT back in the day, I find the notion of a direct remake repulsive, lazy and creatively bankrupt. Instead of a clone with updated graphics, I would have liked to see a sequel with new units, maybe even a new race. Heck, if they really wanted they could still make this WC4 game backwards-compatible with WC3 by including all of the units, maps etc. from that game and adding a "play WC3" button.
It's a trash-tier meme which is why I don't understand wasting a card slot on Renounce the Darkness for this event. A bunch of people jumped down my throat for being anti-fun or w/e for making similar comments in the reveal thread, but this is exactly the point I was getting at back then too: why waste people's time with unplayable "fun" cards when losing isn't fun and there are meme cards that actually pack a punch.
Try the Dota underlords beta. It's basically Valve's official dota autochess game and it's shaping up rather nicely.
What's particularly depressing about this for people outside of china is that it shows how your rights can be violated by foreign countries using (tech) companies as proxies, on the premise that companies have the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason.
You probably should have included that Blitzchung was banned for voicing his support for the Hong Kong protests. Those cowards at blizzard, unsurprisingly, left that out of their little PR statement.
I'm not surprised at all to see Blizzard kowtowing to Winnie the Pooh. It's not like this is the umpteenth example of them bending over backwards to accommodate Chinese diktats, as with the recent art changes. From a business perspective, it makes perfect sense why they'd sell their principles for a slice of the chinese market, but it's still depressing as hell.
If mage got another decent board freeze I reckon most OTK/combo mages would play at least one copy of it. It's a card type that isn't nearly as saturated as priest mass-removal.
I also don't think mass-freeze effects are quite analogous to board clears. It's quite possible that decks would run even more than 6 freeze effects, if they could, in order to lock minion-centric decks out of the game entirely with repeat mass-freezes against a full board.
I'm a bit torn on the issue. On the one hand I think mage's card do an excellent job at outlining the class identity and providing starting players with playable cards, at the same time I think a lot of these cards are so powerful that mage tends to receive rather underwhelming expansion cards year after year. Mage hardly ever gets good burn spells because Fireball and Frostbolt exist. Mage never gets any mass freeze effects because of Frost Nova, Blizzard and Cone of Cold. Mage sometimes gets decent AoE because frankly it doesn't really matter if the class has access to even more board clears, that role is already saturated by the evergreen set.
Flamewaker's condition is "after you cast a spell". That means the player playing a spell card from their hand, which puzzle box or Tortollan Pilgrim don't do.
However, as written, Unseen Saboteur ought to trigger Flamewaker if your opponent plays it against you with ole' walkey on the board.
You absolutely should carry on. After 7 wins you're guaranteed enough gold for a new arena ticket anyway, but with each subsequent win the prize pool gets a lot more stacked.
At the very worst you go 10-3 and buy a new ticket and concede two games there.
Jaraxxus hasn't been a playable card in years. That's not just some weird fluke of the meta that will resolve itself automatically, it's a sign that the card has been left in the dust by power creep. Compare him to the recently nerfed Dr. Boom: they both cost 9, but in one case you gain 7 armor and your life points are left alone, in the other case your max health is capped at 15 and you lose all of your armor.
The cost of entering Jaraxxus mode is not proportional to the reward you get from it. Printing weird cards specifically to shore up Jaraxxus' weaknesses is not only transparently bad design, it'd be an admission that Jaraxxus is underpowered, at which point why not try to address that directly? "Keeping the classic set balanced" would necessarily entail an intervention when cards are chronically over- or underpowered.