I really dislike Spell Mage purely on the basis of how highrolly it is and how polarizing the matchup spread is. It's just no fun facing a competitive deck, trying your best to play around their burst and having to throw all that away because they randomly generate all their answers while drawing their entire deck at turn 5 because they happened to have Wild Growth on steroids in their opening hands.
It's a deck that was originally designed to be kind of a meme and not meant to actually be super competitive, but now it's just a complete control killer that only really loses to hard aggro.
I don't want the deck to be unplayable, but I do want it to just disappear as a legitimate ladder deck because it'S just so boring to play against.
The real problem with Tickatus is that Warlock just doesn't have a reasonable win condition outside of it so even if it's bad it's still better than everything else. I really hope they finally get Big Demons to work so Willow + Jaraxxus is enough value to just close out games and people finally stop jerking off Tickatus.
Alright so since the buffs are supposedly targetting struggling classes and archetypes (instead of just underperforming cards) I feel like we can get a general idea on what they are trying to buff.
Hero Power Mage comes to mind first because that deck is just impossibly slow despite having some pretty decent payoffs. Not even entirely sure how that one could be buffed outside of making Wildfire 1-mana (to scam more out of Wandmaker and also because it's actually unreasonably clunky to actually play the thing without just losing on tempo).
Shaman will obviously get the main share of the buffs, although I'm curious which archetype. I'm also not entirely sure if they can even fix the class since the main issue is the complete lack of draw (The Al'akir Ysera control/combo Shaman would work fine if it weren't for the fact that even Priest gets through their deck faster).
Funnily enough, Paladin might even get some form of buff to the Silver Hand archetype, or even Invigorating Sermon (reducing that to 3 would be huge because it allows you to run Kazakus)
I'm assuming Control Warrior will get some sort of buff since they actually have a decent selection of win conditions, but they just don't have the means of staying alive.
I'm personally hoping that Hunter gets some sort of buff to their value/midrange archetype in a way that doesn't also indirectly buff Face Hunter (Dire Frenzy at 3? Selective Breeder as a 2/2?) It probably wouldn't even take a lot because the general Face Hunter shell can easily be repurposed into something slower, even more if you just cut out the spell package around Pack Runner and use more minions (if only they were useful.
We should also consider that might not even buff mostly new cards but rather retune some of the older ones (like they did with the Boomsday stuff way back when). There's a lot of interesting stuff that hasn't seen play and could be made to work with a bit of investment. Then again, they have said that cards are designed around the year they are released in so I doubt they'd go out of their way to make archetypes from last year viable, although I could be wrong.
I also wonder if they might unnerf a few older cards, especially for Demon Hunter (who is really struggling atm). Would Priestess of Fury be too op if she were back at 6/7? Would she be balanced enough as a 6/6? I feel like most of what DH is missing right now is a way to pressure without having to wait for Inquisitor. Priestess might be able to bridge that gap.
if it helps you, you can easily do the Rogue one without any of the epics if you just include Venomous Scorpid, Wandmaker, Steward of Scrolls and a bunch of Shuffle effects (Gang Up and Togwaggle's Scheme).
It might take a few tries, but you'll eventually find a copy of each spell, especially in practice mode against something like Warrior who has no card draw and will likely survive a while.
Nerfing Spring Water without Flow is irrelevant. All you're doing is nerfing the scenario where MAge doesn't have Flow on 2 while in any other case Spring Water will still end up as a 0-mana draw 2.
Meanwhile, if Flow is nerfed to 3-mana or something then the early game slows down considerably so Control decks have time to set up and aggro decks get an easier start.
But killing Tickatus doesn't kill the deck, because Tickatus literally only matters in like 3 matchups and even then you can usually win off Jaraxxus anyways.
People just really hate the guy and to be fair, Warlock would be far easier to balance if you take out the Tickatus factor and focus on legitimate win conditions instead.
I really don't think Spring Water gets hit over Incanter's Flow. You can nerf the Water all you want, if Mage gets Flow on 2 then the game will just be over anyways unless you're playing aggro.
Hand of A'Dal is not worth nerfing if they take care of First Day and Crabrider.
Octo_bot would be useless at 3-health. It's not an op card by any means, it's the only reason why Rogue is even able to play the game at this point.
Not worth it with that Hunter Puzzle. Staring at fine print like that is just going to give you a headache so until they bring out a guide that just spells out the minions names i'm not gonna bother.
while that is true they still carry the same principle of "I have to deal with this now because it isn't getting any easier later".
I wouldn't have so much of a problem if the caravans weren't so wildly different in design. Some of them, like Priest and Shaman have powerful, but ultimately low impact effects. You want to deny them, but you aren't necessarily losing if you have to leave them up.
Meanwhile, Paladin and Hunter (and to an extent Warlock, even though their caravan is absolute garbage even if it were to be buffed) snowball extremely quickly and put you in a "guess I'll just fucking concede" position if you don't kill them immediately.
If you wanted to buff caravans into a playable state these two (three) would have to be nerfed into a state where they aren't just the absolute best thing to play on turn 2.
Druid or Hunter?
I really dislike Spell Mage purely on the basis of how highrolly it is and how polarizing the matchup spread is. It's just no fun facing a competitive deck, trying your best to play around their burst and having to throw all that away because they randomly generate all their answers while drawing their entire deck at turn 5 because they happened to have Wild Growth on steroids in their opening hands.
It's a deck that was originally designed to be kind of a meme and not meant to actually be super competitive, but now it's just a complete control killer that only really loses to hard aggro.
I don't want the deck to be unplayable, but I do want it to just disappear as a legitimate ladder deck because it'S just so boring to play against.
The real problem with Tickatus is that Warlock just doesn't have a reasonable win condition outside of it so even if it's bad it's still better than everything else. I really hope they finally get Big Demons to work so Willow + Jaraxxus is enough value to just close out games and people finally stop jerking off Tickatus.
Alright so since the buffs are supposedly targetting struggling classes and archetypes (instead of just underperforming cards) I feel like we can get a general idea on what they are trying to buff.
Hero Power Mage comes to mind first because that deck is just impossibly slow despite having some pretty decent payoffs. Not even entirely sure how that one could be buffed outside of making Wildfire 1-mana (to scam more out of Wandmaker and also because it's actually unreasonably clunky to actually play the thing without just losing on tempo).
Shaman will obviously get the main share of the buffs, although I'm curious which archetype. I'm also not entirely sure if they can even fix the class since the main issue is the complete lack of draw (The Al'akir Ysera control/combo Shaman would work fine if it weren't for the fact that even Priest gets through their deck faster).
Funnily enough, Paladin might even get some form of buff to the Silver Hand archetype, or even Invigorating Sermon (reducing that to 3 would be huge because it allows you to run Kazakus)
I'm assuming Control Warrior will get some sort of buff since they actually have a decent selection of win conditions, but they just don't have the means of staying alive.
I'm personally hoping that Hunter gets some sort of buff to their value/midrange archetype in a way that doesn't also indirectly buff Face Hunter (Dire Frenzy at 3? Selective Breeder as a 2/2?) It probably wouldn't even take a lot because the general Face Hunter shell can easily be repurposed into something slower, even more if you just cut out the spell package around Pack Runner and use more minions (if only they were useful.
We should also consider that might not even buff mostly new cards but rather retune some of the older ones (like they did with the Boomsday stuff way back when). There's a lot of interesting stuff that hasn't seen play and could be made to work with a bit of investment. Then again, they have said that cards are designed around the year they are released in so I doubt they'd go out of their way to make archetypes from last year viable, although I could be wrong.
I also wonder if they might unnerf a few older cards, especially for Demon Hunter (who is really struggling atm). Would Priestess of Fury be too op if she were back at 6/7? Would she be balanced enough as a 6/6? I feel like most of what DH is missing right now is a way to pressure without having to wait for Inquisitor. Priestess might be able to bridge that gap.
if it helps you, you can easily do the Rogue one without any of the epics if you just include Venomous Scorpid, Wandmaker, Steward of Scrolls and a bunch of Shuffle effects (Gang Up and Togwaggle's Scheme).
It might take a few tries, but you'll eventually find a copy of each spell, especially in practice mode against something like Warrior who has no card draw and will likely survive a while.
Nerfing Spring Water without Flow is irrelevant. All you're doing is nerfing the scenario where MAge doesn't have Flow on 2 while in any other case Spring Water will still end up as a 0-mana draw 2.
Meanwhile, if Flow is nerfed to 3-mana or something then the early game slows down considerably so Control decks have time to set up and aggro decks get an easier start.
Water is 0-mana draw 2.
Flow is a literal Dungeon Run treasure
But killing Tickatus doesn't kill the deck, because Tickatus literally only matters in like 3 matchups and even then you can usually win off Jaraxxus anyways.
People just really hate the guy and to be fair, Warlock would be far easier to balance if you take out the Tickatus factor and focus on legitimate win conditions instead.
inb4 Fishy Flyer gets nerfed :^)
I really don't think Spring Water gets hit over Incanter's Flow. You can nerf the Water all you want, if Mage gets Flow on 2 then the game will just be over anyways unless you're playing aggro.
Hand of A'Dal is not worth nerfing if they take care of First Day and Crabrider.
Octo_bot would be useless at 3-health. It's not an op card by any means, it's the only reason why Rogue is even able to play the game at this point.
Honestly he can't be that good seeing how you still end up with 10g at the end :^)
thanks a bunch, now I don't have to ruin my eyesight trying to find which of the clowns has a cheese addiction
oh, sweet, thanks bud
Not worth it with that Hunter Puzzle. Staring at fine print like that is just going to give you a headache so until they bring out a guide that just spells out the minions names i'm not gonna bother.
5 nerfs seems a little....low?
Off the top of my head Crabrider, First Day of School, Oh My Yogg!, Mankrik, Incanter's Flow are top priority, but then you're still left with stuff like Ogremancer, Alexstrasza the Life-Binder, Tickatus (not op, but I guess people really need a wake up call that Warlock is really terrible and they should stop playing it), Animated Broomstick (I feel like people just forgot that this is still around and is still immensly broken)
Maybe the buffs will balance it out in the long term, but even then I'm not sure.
Whatever, as long as Spell Mage gets yeeted into oblivion and Paladin stops having the best cards for each mana slot I'm going to be alright.
All clues are solved but the puzzles are hard.
Hunter looks like it will take a while
One of the mechs from boomsday has a prequel meme. I think it was the 2/6 taunt lifesteal one.
Why did you make me click this link? You didn't have to but you did anyways.
I don't want bad touch grandma, please go away
Get your very own Magni Bronzebeard today
(Beard sold seperately)
while that is true they still carry the same principle of "I have to deal with this now because it isn't getting any easier later".
I wouldn't have so much of a problem if the caravans weren't so wildly different in design. Some of them, like Priest and Shaman have powerful, but ultimately low impact effects. You want to deny them, but you aren't necessarily losing if you have to leave them up.
Meanwhile, Paladin and Hunter (and to an extent Warlock, even though their caravan is absolute garbage even if it were to be buffed) snowball extremely quickly and put you in a "guess I'll just fucking concede" position if you don't kill them immediately.
If you wanted to buff caravans into a playable state these two (three) would have to be nerfed into a state where they aren't just the absolute best thing to play on turn 2.
Gib Pirates
Now.