Even with the plethora of different secrets it's not that difficult to play around them...and Handlock rails Mage. Save a cheap spell (Coin, Mortal Coil, Soulfire) and a cheap minion (Earthen Ring, Sunfury Protector, Ancient Watcher) in the midgame if you can't beat Counterspell or Mirror Entity. Once Mage blows both Fireballs on big taunted guys you just need to stay above 11 health in case they have Pyroblast. If they don't Fireball your guys they will die too fast.
People already said that if you played sub-optimally to test secret it also means that your opponent's secret triggers sub-optimally. Your opponent gain nothing significant in value while you lose nothing. That in turns, means that you are playing optimally against their secrets. It is the same as to not commit too much on your field while facing Paladins in fear of Equality + Pyromancer, not dropping a giant in turn 4 in fear of a hex, not taunting up a giant in fear of The Black Knight. See? You ARE still playing optimally, just not as originally planned. The optimal play always switches depending on the board and your opponent cards. If you are really that lazy to think about checking secrets before playing something than i doubt handlock is suitable for you. Zoo and tempo priest can trigger all mage secrets without losing too much value, go play them instead.
OP's attempt to start a flame is admirable. Most people would usually give up soon, but he's very committed and has been repeating the same stuff for dats. I appreciate that level of commitment to a lost cause.
When I play secret mage, I kind of use the secrets to maintain tempo, especially in the early game. Even if those "sub-optimal" trades make my secrets appear worthless, they really delayed the opponent another turn from playing something bigger, allowing me to increase my hold on board control.
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Twitch name: Anatak15 NA Legend Season 48, 49, 52, 53, 54, 74
OP seems angry at losing a few games. Not sure why others are posting here, this has gone from constructive discussion to a number of posts linked only by the word 'secret'.
Yeah he's angry haha. I was responding to FreakyProphet. If I really wanted, I could have created a new thread for just my one post there, but it seemed like a real waste. It all starts with people telling him that secret mages aren't so bad, and they're tough to play well.
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Twitch name: Anatak15 NA Legend Season 48, 49, 52, 53, 54, 74
Hearthstone is more or less based off of the TCG Magic: The Gathering and the original World of Warcraft TCG, as such, the way the resource system works we can't have instants in this game without having awkward pauses and chances to respond in matches as opposed to what they are nowadays, quick and more interaction-minded overall. Secrets serve as a spell playable on your opponent's turn but requires a specific type of interaction in order to occur, in a way this is the best way that the concept could be translated from MTG without shifting the focus from field interaction. I personally find secrets to not be much of a problem or for that matter, even played much at all, throughout my higher ranked matches. I feel like the way you choose to deal with them(or lack thereof) is what makes people feel like they're either overpowered or more or less fairly balanced in the larger scope of things. I assume with the next expansion, more secret-oriented cards will be released involving interaction on that level so as to give every class access to both some form of secret or an efficient way of countering them.
I feel that secret mage is a VERY strong deck, but what I see it do against my shaman, is generally force my conservative plays, then when the secrets run out, I have to burst or I usually end up losing. pretty much, as a midrange, I have to prep for that opening, and stay alive until then.
To be honest I see this as the opposite. I stopped playing secret mage because people adapted as they usually do in these situations. If I know the potential for what secrets are played (IE Checking them appropriately and knowing what I can spare) then they wasted a card and mana playing something that didn't work.
Your complaint is no removal - YOU are the removal. Think its counter spell? Play a card you don't care about to much like Smite, Chaos Bolt, Magic Missle... something cheap and not a lynch pin on your deck. Mirror image? Oh no... they took a Argent Squire! That will really wreak my day. Ice block? Ping them down, use your mana to secure the board and wait one more turn. Nine times out of ten when they are down to things like Ice Block and all, they are already down and you should be able to finish them off. A lot of times I was dead drawing into Ice Block and realizing I have no outs and nothing would really keep me in the game.
You can beat the stratagy of hiding behind secrets pretty easily - and as such I moved away from it. Last season I was rank... about 15-14ish and playing what was "Strong" at the time. But I made my own Druid deck, changed up a hunter deck (no secrets), and I moved up to 4ish. You can't really blame the cards for something easily beatable.
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Do unto others as they have done unto you! "Well met!"
To be honest I see this as the opposite. I stopped playing secret mage because people adapted as they usually do in these situations. If I know the potential for what secrets are played (IE Checking them appropriately and knowing what I can spare) then they wasted a card and mana playing something that didn't work.
Your complaint is no removal - YOU are the removal. Think its counter spell? Play a card you don't care about to much like Smite, Chaos Bolt, Magic Missle... something cheap and not a lynch pin on your deck. Mirror image? Oh no... they took a Argent Squire! That will really wreak my day. Ice block? Ping them down, use your mana to secure the board and wait one more turn. Nine times out of ten when they are down to things like Ice Block and all, they are already down and you should be able to finish them off. A lot of times I was dead drawing into Ice Block and realizing I have no outs and nothing would really keep me in the game.
You can beat the stratagy of hiding behind secrets pretty easily - and as such I moved away from it. Last season I was rank... about 15-14ish and playing what was "Strong" at the time. But I made my own Druid deck, changed up a hunter deck (no secrets), and I moved up to 4ish. You can't really blame the cards for something easily beatable.
Preface: not saying secrets are OP.
The problem with this is that some decks don't want to include bad cards just to be secret bait. I understand all 30 cards are not must haves in every situation, but it is not scarce to be gripping 3 very crucial cards for the game and hit a secret and not want to waste the cards you need to break it which gives them wiggle room to bear down on you. You aren't going to convince me to include argent squire just to beat mirror entity and thus weaken my whole deck.
No, not that specifically no. Run your deck how you want. But I know that in my Hunter deck I don't mind having Spectral Spiders being Mirror Image bait. I know if I fear a Counter Spell ruining my plan I might wait till I have something weaker that is NOT included with my current plan. You can't walk into every match expecting to do the same thing over and over, especially at high levels. You can't just make your deck expecting to get Rag and the game is over.
I build my deck how I feel will be safe and secure. If I see that secrets are becoming a problem at my ranks or just more frequent - then you can always play around them. If your deck is wildly susceptible to traps then that's a flaw in YOUR deck design. A while ago at tournys everyone was playing Zoo, Murlock, Secrets, Hunter.... and what decks won the tourney? Decks that COUNTERED them. Not decks that whined about being defeated by one bad card. If a handful of traps can beat your deck and preventing you from moving up - then work around them as safely as possible.
For example - the deck that I used to use for hunter was 7 traps. It worked for a time, but whenever someone seen a trap out they used smaller less impactful cards to bait it out and defeat it. 7 traps. That's a lot of cards if your deck can be NO more then 30 cards. That's 23% of your deck devoted to cards NOT working anymore as intended. And there were 2 cards for getting the traps out for free. So now that's 9 cards. Just in 1/3 of my deck was SOULY dependent on Traps that now were ineffective. One of my strategy's were to get Snake trap out, get Buzzard and Alpha Wolf. So when the trap was sprung, I would get 3 cards and they would be 2/2 tokens. For free... sounds great. BUT - I wasted now 12 cards for that combo.
As you can see building your deck around specific game changing combos can be effective - but in some cases it can lead to 7...9...12... cards that can be EASILY countered. Basically making my deck 1/3 less effective right off the bat. You can think that Traps are over rated, over powered, cheap, and unfair. But ANYONE who is at higher ranks, and going to tourneys can tell you that this is definitely not the case.
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Do unto others as they have done unto you! "Well met!"
I like secrets, even playing against them. They create an element of risk but if you can bait your opponent into wasting them on weak minions or insignificant spells it reduces their effectiveness. You basically have to work on trying to trick your opponent into incorrectly guessing your deck mechanics. May not always work but it's fun to burn through an opponent's secret cards with junk. Of course the more skilled players will most likely not fall for most attempts to bait them but that's just a result of unequal skill levels and a need to improve how you construct and play your deck against certain deck builds.
If secrets were the definition of strategic, the only pro deck that has them besides Hunter wouldn't be Freeze Mage. You don't see people in tournaments dropping secrets. They play well made, balanced and/or slightly OP decks, not a random element of frustration.
Most "Pros" actually hate playing interactive (aka. "Strategic") decks. Why? Because it gives a good player a chance to beat them. There's a reason why the top decks are always the most un-fun to play against (Zoo, Hunter, Freeze Mage, Miracle, other Combo). It's because they're the most un-interactive. By trivializing the impact of your opponent's decisions, you're drastically lowering the skill requirement needed to win. So it's like now you just have to be good at playing an RNG-dominated game of Solitaire, instead of a mental game of Poker. Why else would Firebat be able to so confidently say that "at this level, [play skill doesn't really matter]; the match is decided in the picks and bans phase"?
Secrets don't get played in decks other than Hunter and Freeze Mage precisely because they're too "strategic" in most other decks, so good players will be able to minimize their value. Secrets actually increase the competitiveness of the game by encouraging mind games / bluffing and raise the relevant skill cap in any given match up.
What's actually OP is a timely Mad Scientist proc. That's just crazy broken because it's way too much value packed into 1 card: trades against everything in a meta with no 2/3's (because of the prevalence of 3/4's for 3), tutors a card (wtf!?), and plays it for free (okay seriously, wtf!?!). Anyone who's played Magic knows that's beyond absurd.
So really, if anything, what we need are better secrets for other classes, and a nerfed Mad Scientist. For example, maybe a Mirror Entity that reads "copy your opponent's minion, give your copy +1 health". Something that actually encourages us to play secrets naked, instead of making them so polarized (either OP or still-very-weak) in most decks.
To be fair, Firebat says skill doesn't matter because he's assuming everyone in the tournament is good enough to play their decks close to optimally, so it is decided on matchups. In an amateur tournament skill still very much matters.
To be fair, Firebat says skill doesn't matter because he's assuming everyone in the tournament is good enough to play their decks close to optimally, so it is decided on matchups. In an amateur tournament skill still very much matters.
To be fair but even in the top16 some people made mistakes when under pressure and others did not. Part of being skilled is not being tilted because thousands watch you and the game you are playing may win you 100k dollars.
To be fair, Firebat says skill doesn't matter because he's assuming everyone in the tournament is good enough to play their decks close to optimally, so it is decided on matchups. In an amateur tournament skill still very much matters.
To be fair but even in the top16 some people made mistakes when under pressure and others did not. Part of being skilled is not being tilted because thousands watch you and the game you are playing may win you 100k dollars.
Yeah, like Kolento's terrible mistake at the end of WCS.
Still, the point stands: competitive decks in any tcg/ccg generally want to be as uninteractive as possible so as to pre-emptively limit the number of viable strategies against them and to forcefully lower the skill cap in advance, making the game a lot more RNG dependent outside of picks and bans. Secrets are potentially very healthy for the game as they can provide more competitive depth if properly designed.
A simple neutral secret removal card would solve this issue - and I'm sure there will be one in the next expansion.
Maybe an "Archivist" - 2/3 minion for 3 mana + removal of 1 secret (or maybe ALL secrets - both players) That would be interesting.
Even with the plethora of different secrets it's not that difficult to play around them...and Handlock rails Mage. Save a cheap spell (Coin, Mortal Coil, Soulfire) and a cheap minion (Earthen Ring, Sunfury Protector, Ancient Watcher) in the midgame if you can't beat Counterspell or Mirror Entity. Once Mage blows both Fireballs on big taunted guys you just need to stay above 11 health in case they have Pyroblast. If they don't Fireball your guys they will die too fast.
People already said that if you played sub-optimally to test secret it also means that your opponent's secret triggers sub-optimally. Your opponent gain nothing significant in value while you lose nothing. That in turns, means that you are playing optimally against their secrets. It is the same as to not commit too much on your field while facing Paladins in fear of Equality + Pyromancer, not dropping a giant in turn 4 in fear of a hex, not taunting up a giant in fear of The Black Knight. See? You ARE still playing optimally, just not as originally planned. The optimal play always switches depending on the board and your opponent cards. If you are really that lazy to think about checking secrets before playing something than i doubt handlock is suitable for you. Zoo and tempo priest can trigger all mage secrets without losing too much value, go play them instead.
OP's attempt to start a flame is admirable. Most people would usually give up soon, but he's very committed and has been repeating the same stuff for dats. I appreciate that level of commitment to a lost cause.
When I play secret mage, I kind of use the secrets to maintain tempo, especially in the early game. Even if those "sub-optimal" trades make my secrets appear worthless, they really delayed the opponent another turn from playing something bigger, allowing me to increase my hold on board control.
Twitch name: Anatak15
NA Legend Season 48, 49, 52, 53, 54, 74
OP seems angry at losing a few games. Not sure why others are posting here, this has gone from constructive discussion to a number of posts linked only by the word 'secret'.
Yeah he's angry haha. I was responding to FreakyProphet. If I really wanted, I could have created a new thread for just my one post there, but it seemed like a real waste. It all starts with people telling him that secret mages aren't so bad, and they're tough to play well.
Twitch name: Anatak15
NA Legend Season 48, 49, 52, 53, 54, 74
Hearthstone is more or less based off of the TCG Magic: The Gathering and the original World of Warcraft TCG, as such, the way the resource system works we can't have instants in this game without having awkward pauses and chances to respond in matches as opposed to what they are nowadays, quick and more interaction-minded overall. Secrets serve as a spell playable on your opponent's turn but requires a specific type of interaction in order to occur, in a way this is the best way that the concept could be translated from MTG without shifting the focus from field interaction. I personally find secrets to not be much of a problem or for that matter, even played much at all, throughout my higher ranked matches. I feel like the way you choose to deal with them(or lack thereof) is what makes people feel like they're either overpowered or more or less fairly balanced in the larger scope of things. I assume with the next expansion, more secret-oriented cards will be released involving interaction on that level so as to give every class access to both some form of secret or an efficient way of countering them.
I feel that secret mage is a VERY strong deck, but what I see it do against my shaman, is generally force my conservative plays, then when the secrets run out, I have to burst or I usually end up losing. pretty much, as a midrange, I have to prep for that opening, and stay alive until then.
I love people who call for Blizzard to do something on Hearthpwn forums, not the Blizzard Hearthstone Forums.
To be honest I see this as the opposite. I stopped playing secret mage because people adapted as they usually do in these situations. If I know the potential for what secrets are played (IE Checking them appropriately and knowing what I can spare) then they wasted a card and mana playing something that didn't work.
Your complaint is no removal - YOU are the removal. Think its counter spell? Play a card you don't care about to much like Smite, Chaos Bolt, Magic Missle... something cheap and not a lynch pin on your deck. Mirror image? Oh no... they took a Argent Squire! That will really wreak my day. Ice block? Ping them down, use your mana to secure the board and wait one more turn. Nine times out of ten when they are down to things like Ice Block and all, they are already down and you should be able to finish them off. A lot of times I was dead drawing into Ice Block and realizing I have no outs and nothing would really keep me in the game.
You can beat the stratagy of hiding behind secrets pretty easily - and as such I moved away from it. Last season I was rank... about 15-14ish and playing what was "Strong" at the time. But I made my own Druid deck, changed up a hunter deck (no secrets), and I moved up to 4ish. You can't really blame the cards for something easily beatable.
Do unto others as they have done unto you! "Well met!"
Preface: not saying secrets are OP.
The problem with this is that some decks don't want to include bad cards just to be secret bait. I understand all 30 cards are not must haves in every situation, but it is not scarce to be gripping 3 very crucial cards for the game and hit a secret and not want to waste the cards you need to break it which gives them wiggle room to bear down on you. You aren't going to convince me to include argent squire just to beat mirror entity and thus weaken my whole deck.
No, not that specifically no. Run your deck how you want. But I know that in my Hunter deck I don't mind having Spectral Spiders being Mirror Image bait. I know if I fear a Counter Spell ruining my plan I might wait till I have something weaker that is NOT included with my current plan. You can't walk into every match expecting to do the same thing over and over, especially at high levels. You can't just make your deck expecting to get Rag and the game is over.
I build my deck how I feel will be safe and secure. If I see that secrets are becoming a problem at my ranks or just more frequent - then you can always play around them. If your deck is wildly susceptible to traps then that's a flaw in YOUR deck design. A while ago at tournys everyone was playing Zoo, Murlock, Secrets, Hunter.... and what decks won the tourney? Decks that COUNTERED them. Not decks that whined about being defeated by one bad card. If a handful of traps can beat your deck and preventing you from moving up - then work around them as safely as possible.
For example - the deck that I used to use for hunter was 7 traps. It worked for a time, but whenever someone seen a trap out they used smaller less impactful cards to bait it out and defeat it. 7 traps. That's a lot of cards if your deck can be NO more then 30 cards. That's 23% of your deck devoted to cards NOT working anymore as intended. And there were 2 cards for getting the traps out for free. So now that's 9 cards. Just in 1/3 of my deck was SOULY dependent on Traps that now were ineffective. One of my strategy's were to get Snake trap out, get Buzzard and Alpha Wolf. So when the trap was sprung, I would get 3 cards and they would be 2/2 tokens. For free... sounds great. BUT - I wasted now 12 cards for that combo.
As you can see building your deck around specific game changing combos can be effective - but in some cases it can lead to 7...9...12... cards that can be EASILY countered. Basically making my deck 1/3 less effective right off the bat. You can think that Traps are over rated, over powered, cheap, and unfair. But ANYONE who is at higher ranks, and going to tourneys can tell you that this is definitely not the case.
Do unto others as they have done unto you! "Well met!"
I like secrets, even playing against them. They create an element of risk but if you can bait your opponent into wasting them on weak minions or insignificant spells it reduces their effectiveness. You basically have to work on trying to trick your opponent into incorrectly guessing your deck mechanics. May not always work but it's fun to burn through an opponent's secret cards with junk. Of course the more skilled players will most likely not fall for most attempts to bait them but that's just a result of unequal skill levels and a need to improve how you construct and play your deck against certain deck builds.
We need more mages on ladder not less.
If you can't beat em' join em', a neutral secret removal card would be nice tho.
Got'cha.
Most "Pros" actually hate playing interactive (aka. "Strategic") decks. Why? Because it gives a good player a chance to beat them. There's a reason why the top decks are always the most un-fun to play against (Zoo, Hunter, Freeze Mage, Miracle, other Combo). It's because they're the most un-interactive. By trivializing the impact of your opponent's decisions, you're drastically lowering the skill requirement needed to win. So it's like now you just have to be good at playing an RNG-dominated game of Solitaire, instead of a mental game of Poker. Why else would Firebat be able to so confidently say that "at this level, [play skill doesn't really matter]; the match is decided in the picks and bans phase"?
Secrets don't get played in decks other than Hunter and Freeze Mage precisely because they're too "strategic" in most other decks, so good players will be able to minimize their value. Secrets actually increase the competitiveness of the game by encouraging mind games / bluffing and raise the relevant skill cap in any given match up.
What's actually OP is a timely Mad Scientist proc. That's just crazy broken because it's way too much value packed into 1 card: trades against everything in a meta with no 2/3's (because of the prevalence of 3/4's for 3), tutors a card (wtf!?), and plays it for free (okay seriously, wtf!?!). Anyone who's played Magic knows that's beyond absurd.
So really, if anything, what we need are better secrets for other classes, and a nerfed Mad Scientist. For example, maybe a Mirror Entity that reads "copy your opponent's minion, give your copy +1 health". Something that actually encourages us to play secrets naked, instead of making them so polarized (either OP or still-very-weak) in most decks.
To be fair, Firebat says skill doesn't matter because he's assuming everyone in the tournament is good enough to play their decks close to optimally, so it is decided on matchups. In an amateur tournament skill still very much matters.
To be fair but even in the top16 some people made mistakes when under pressure and others did not. Part of being skilled is not being tilted because thousands watch you and the game you are playing may win you 100k dollars.
Yeah, like Kolento's terrible mistake at the end of WCS.
Still, the point stands: competitive decks in any tcg/ccg generally want to be as uninteractive as possible so as to pre-emptively limit the number of viable strategies against them and to forcefully lower the skill cap in advance, making the game a lot more RNG dependent outside of picks and bans. Secrets are potentially very healthy for the game as they can provide more competitive depth if properly designed.