Hearthpwn

No, at least until hearthstonen deliver worthwhile alternative. While Doomsayer is storng board clear he isn't that good on his own. Also while he is used in many decks there is huge difference between being commong because card is too good and being common because you have no other choice. If you want play any control deck then you need tools for that. This also means board clears. But for now only Warlock, Warrior, Priest and Paladin delivers that. Mage, Shaman and Rouge (if someone want rely on Vanish) gives you semi-clear, which is often too weak to let you stabilize on it's own. So they rely on Doomsayer, because there's nothing left.

This is maybe single reason, but a strong one why we need this card to stay in classic set, at least for now. When we get new options to defend ourselves, then maybe doomsayer will be forced to leave standard.

This is not a rhetorical question:

Ignoring the freeze mage, or similar, application..

...which other cards seriously make an opponent consider not playing a minion on that turn beside doomsayer?

(I understand that in a thread this long someone surely asked something similar, my apologies)

I would like to know because I too would like an alternative even though I have no beef with doomsayer myself personally.

Control players would complain about Ice Block because of OTK quest mages, where your actions are essentially meaningless.  You are playing a solitaire game, where the quest mages either gets her combo in time or not.

And of course quest mages run both Doomsayer, which buy them anywhere between 2-4 extra turns.

Doomsayer is fine, if a card needs to rotate to the hall of fame, that should be Innervate unless it's hanged.

Quote from DiamondDM13 >>

Quote from ana77over >>

of course, every hearthstone player should smorc safely. that's what hearthstone means to some players. 

in this meta, do you really encounter mage? ice block, ice block, ice block! how many times will you mention it in hof whining threads. reno jackson was a thing that can heal you multiple times by returning to your hand. but if someone complained about it, some game experts would declare that only aggro players complain about reno because reno decks are so wow much skillful etc. but really why the fuck control players bitch about ice block. you play a deck full od tech cards. if you don't bother to add an amazing anti-secret card to your decks, please shut the fuck up!

hall of fame is not for removing all useful classicc and basic cards.

 That just makes no sense. Why would a Control player complain about Ice Block? Ice Block is an Anti-Aggro tool and little else other than that. Control games are generally won by attrition and Ice Block doesn't do anything about that. If your deck is a control deck, it will likely outvalue the Mage, and unless you don't have any kind of healing, which is something Control decks tend to run, then Ice Block doesn't really matter in a Control Matchup, not when played correctly.

 

Quote from DiamondDM13 >>

Quote from hebbe84 >>

 Historically, decks with Ice Block certainly haven't won control matchups by attrition. It's true for pretty much only the old fatigue mage and the newer DK lists. Freeze mage, for instance, never was able to win control games by attrition. Not any matchup that I can recall at least. Which brings us to Ice Block's role in those matchups. If nothing else, they allowed you two extra turns to find your burn if you had a less than ideal draw. 

The reason Ice Block isn't doing much in control matchups, genereally, is because control decks can't pressure the same way that midrange and aggro can. It really has nothing to do with attrition.

 Ice Block is used in Combo and Control Mage decks. Combo Mage decks win the game by Combo, Control Mage decks win the game by Attrition. Freeze Mage is a Combo deck, as such, the win condition is not attrition, but combo. It is possible to win by attrition as a Freeze Mage, yes, in Aggro Matchups, because you can exhaust the Aggro deck and Alexstrazsa yourself to keep going, but those are not common games.

Control Matchups with Freeze Mage are rarely won by the two extra turns. A Control deck will not rush the Freeze Mage down, they will simply beat the Mage through attrition. They have health generation that surpasses the burn the Mage has, meaning once the Mage is out of burn, the game is over. That is why the Old Control Warrior was such a bad matchup. The Warriors didn't give a shit about Ice Blocks. They would just armour to oblivion, remove your main threats, and just watch the Mage die of fatigue without enough burn to kill them. This was an extreme in Control Warrior, but it is how the Freeze Mage matchup goes against Control decks. Control deck don't care about your Ice Blocks, they simply outlast the Freeze Mage.

This is where Exodia Mage comes in, which trades the great matchup Freeze Mage has with Aggro and Midrange, for a great matchup against Control. You can't Attrition out an Exodia Mage, they will beat you with infinite damage.

And yes, the reason Ice Block doesn't do much in Control Matchups is because Control decks don't need to pressure a Combo deck (except Exodia), they can win by Attrition. The only problem arrises with a Combo deck with infinite damage, which requires 170 HP total to be safe. It has everything to do with Attrition. The moment you move on to Control Mage decks, which actually win games by Attrition, then Ice Block is still irrelevant. It will sometimes give you wins, but that is extremely rare. For most part, the attrition battle is what decides the outcome of the Control Mirror.

Quote from Krafulu >>

While not OP, it is extraordinarily meta defining. And in addition, its hard to find a situation where it would become unpopular. 

What ever would replace frost nova doomsayer for instance?

While yes, in a vacuum (without seeing what new cards and strategies that come) it would swing more power to aggro decks, I think Doomsayer has had its day in the sun for plenty of time and it's time for something new. 

No. He's not an auto-include in pretty much every deck, or especially problematic, so he doesn't meet the same criteria as previous HoF cards.

If we do that, please rotate trogg and totem golem back in.

Might as well make the fiesta complete. 

Quote from DiamondDM13 >>

Quote from hebbe84 >>

 You were specifically discussing control matchups in regard to attrition, and very clearly so was I. Whether freeze mage can win by attrition against aggro is hence completely beside the point. It is, however, in fact very common against aggro to win with defensive alex contrary to your statement. Here already, I suspect that you in fact haven't really played freeze mage at all. 

In regards to the freeze mage against control specifically, which freeze mage are we talking about? Because historically, almost no control decks have been able to beat freeze mage through attrition. Fatigue decks (incredibly rare, practically non-existant in any meta ever) and control warrior. I can't think of a single deck other than those that actually had the game plan of attrition against freeze mage. As a general statment that controls game plan against freeze mage is, or was, attrition is in any case completely wrong. It has been the exception, rather than the rule. Against for example virtually every control priest there has been, literally every control warlock, control paladin etc. the game plan has always been to pressure the freeze mage down. This was especially true during the entire Emperor Thaurissan era when freeze mage could OTK every single deck except for warriors and other mages with Ice Block. In all these matchups, double ice block to dig for your burn for two extra turns, was in fact game deciding in a fair amount of games. If nothing else, they were needed to set up a kill with Alexstrasza when you had no OTK option.

 

As for your initial statement that control doesn't (or hasn't, historically) care about freeze mages ice block, is just plain wrong.

 Firstly, DiamondDM13#2815. In all 3 servers for this game. It is literally the only deck I have the cards to play in all the servers, Freeze Mage is my favourite all time deck, I have indeed played it thousands of times. We can schedule a day we both have free, and I can teach you how to play the deck over a best of 200 games, just to be sure it's just not just random lucky chance. (I can be lucky and beat you over 10 games, the chances that I get lucky and beat you over 200 games are nearly unexistent)

Using Alexstrazsa defensively is not winning by attrition.  You can beat a Miracle Rogue by attrition, and not have to use Alexstrazsa defensively at all, simply exhaust their deck. Same can be done to Aggro decks. You can Alexstrazsa defensively and no be winning the attrition battle, simply use it to help survive until you kill the opponent.

I'm talking about the Freeze Mage deck as a whole. The deck changed a few times since Beta when I started playing it. Back then, it was focused around Alexstrazsa into burn and using Antonidas to gather more burn damage in case it was needed. This list stood on top until Thaurissan and the Forgotten Torches were released, where the Torches were adopted into faster lists. Then Kobold was finally added to the list, which made the OTK kill MUCH easier. You could still OTK with Freeze Mage before Kobold, but it would require you to save all the burn + Thalnos for 32 Damage after Thaurissan.

During all these iterations of Freeze Mage, the deck always struggled with Control Warriors, because they could just Armour past the Damage cap of the Freeze Mage. This was also true for all the non Kobold versions of the Freeze Mage. The deck always excelled against Aggro and Midrange, but against Control, as long as the Control deck had good healing and removal, you always struggled to beat it. The only problem was when OTK was prevalent, which is exactly the issue that makes Exodia so powerful against Control decks, it basically allows the Mage to ignore healing and just kill the enemy outright, only Druids and Warrior would survive OTK of 30 damage with Armour.

If you want examples, just look at Un'Goro, when Freeze Mage lost the OTK option. Suddenly, Priests and Paladins, as long as Control lists, they became terrible matchups for the Freeze Mage, simply because they had the option to heal the burn and just kill them through attrition. I guess in these past months the way you played control decks against Freeze Mage was to rush them down, rather then just exhaust them out of damage. One strategy is much easier to accomplish, since Control decks are prepared to follow the attrition plan, not the rush plan.

Only during Thaurissan times with the option for OTK has the rush plan been needed or tech cards, because, much like Exodia, if you can get OTK'ed down, you can't attrition the opponent unless you can prevent the OTK.

Anyway, it's like running circles trying to explain somethng so obvious to you. We can do the 200 games if you want, but hopefully you go and seek more explanations beyond me in case you still don't understand me.

Playing around AoE

Yeah, Fel Reaver on board with a hand full of freeze was quite satisfying indeed :)

Maybe mech mage was a good matchup, I might be misremembering. Paladin lists, without a lot of healing, was always a very good matchup yes and so was midrange shamans. Maybe it has been good against most midrange decks, I can't really come up with a lot of lists off the top of my head.

To be honest, I'm having a hard time remembering the matchups prior to blackrock mountain so maybe priest and control paladin was bad back then. What kind of burst heal did priest run? I can't really remember them running anything before flash heal. Just the hero power is easy enough to overcome anyway.

There wasn't any real OTK, in the sense that it was common, before the kobold no. However thaurissan did help a lot against decks that healed anyway. You could fairly easily overcome the 8 heal from healbot and lay on hands for instance, by casting double fireball, frostbolt, double ice lance (and some other combos with thalnos etc). Encountering more heal than 8 in a single turn was very rare as far as I can remember.

I still don't really understand what you mean about control decks not needing to pressure freeze mage. I mean handlock certainly tried for instance, even though they ran a bunch of heal as well. I seem to remember ice block mattering a great deal against handlock in particular. Control paladin (I'm talking guardian of kings old), while not really able to pressure that hard, at least tried. If a control deck has pretty much any pressure at all by the time you play alex, they generally have lethal, or very close to it, on board so how does the presence of ice block not matter here? Against a deck you know to run heal, you would've also been fairly conservative with using your burn as removal right? Do note though, that I'm not saying that ice block is nearly as relevant against control as it is against aggro or midrange.

Anyway, it doesn't really matter. I do of course agree with you that Dirty Rat is a much better tech against quest mage in particular, than Eater of Secrets (Nerubian Unraveler is straight up garbage as far as I'm concerned)

Yes.  Let's remove the only tier 1 card Druid doesn't use.