Mage's defense is freezing the enemy. We got Ray of Frost as a new defensive tool and frost nova + doomsayer is still a thing (board clear at turn 5). Zilliax is also a good turn 5 minion which heals you and is a taunt.
Though I have to say I am kinda disappointed that there was no 1 drop for mage in this set. It was kinda needed and I hope that the next set has one
Ray of frost is a good card but only usable on tempo mage to be honest. I actually think it can fall into a midrange/control type of deck if only those types get support.
Zilliax good yes, i forgot about him.
Yeah I agree. A nice 1 drop would help a ton!!
I have to disagree on ray of frost only being good on tempo mage. I currently play a light variant of the deck recipe deck (took out Malacrass and added an acidic swamp ooze) and ray of frost has been amazing for me so far. It's versatile, cheap and I mainly use it for freezing, not for damaging. It's also great that when you use it the first time it doesnt shrink your hand size so that you can have a better astromancer turn. You don't actually have to remove the enemy minions. As long as I get to survive the first 5 turns with about half my health and I have a blizzard in my hand games tend to get won by the sheer amount of value you get from turn 7+ with astromancer, tools of creation and conjurer's calling.
Though I have to admit so far I didn't really face that many board swarm decks. Most of my enemies are bomb warriors or some kind of rogue (thief or lackey) and those enemies don't really go wide that often and when they do it's in turn 6+ when I can blizzard and flamestrike the board.
I reached for the very bottom of the barrel yesterday. I resorted to using Ice Cream Peddler and freezing my own minion for armor in true Freeze Shaman style. Spoiler alert: It did not work out too well!
Thematically it makes sense that mage is weak, the villian organization is attacking the mage capital dalaran, so mage is weak against such invasion.. but once mage gets more power during the year is will prevail.
Anyway you have proud defender on 4, you got a board clear in 5 with Doomsayer +Frost Nova
Mage got decent 2 mana cards, also the raven messenger is really good.. just that mage doesn't have enough survavility to play it, also mage got nice removal..
Oh and there are some small board clears that paired with spell damage (Which is plentiful this expansion) can be devastating (I was in the receiving end of such AOE :( )
After 1500 games it might be hard to look for previesly weak cards/combos but now it's the time to look at past year cards and some unused classic/basic cards that might be good to try and make mage work, while everyone is underestimating you (at least those that look at the data) you could be winning a lot cause of the surprise factor.
You are a mage main you should not dismiss all possibilities.
Did you try to go the dragon route BTW? that was the best mage deck before rotation according to blizzard's data (source:auto complete and I have almost all mage cards).
Here are some directions/cards you should try:
Dragon Mage,neutral cheap taunts(like proud defender),doomsayer + frost nova, tempo mage ,spell damage mage, miracle mage(with cheap spells and auctioneer, saw such a deck before in a firebat video it was interesting),
Ray of frost in control mage (if you didn't use it yet, it's very good vs high boards.. and even against wide you freeze 2 minions), ice barrier(probably not.. but it's a class heal, and it forces your opponent to make awkward plays specially if they don't know you are control yet)
Actually DO play blast wave, good against aggro boards which are the ones that cause you problems.
And that' it all that I could think for as of now..
If thats the case... I guess I will wait until the last expansion then lmao. Would be fun tho.
I've tried Proud defender. Its not bad and sometimes i use it but Im using Twilight Drake. Its a good stated minion to trade. But proud defender seems to be need as of now but at 4 mana.... Tar creeper shined because it was on turn 3. Aggro at turn 4 has already tools to deal with 6 health.
Mage 2 mana cards are good but very situational. Apprentice is only used in tempo (for best usage). Arugal will barely survive and his effect is on the following turn... Made no sense having him at 2 health (unless you spend more mana and use a card draw but that will fill with your hand way faster). The Tornado elemental is also on Tempo (for better performance). That leave us with Kadghar which is an awesome card. I thought he would be average but even if he has only 1 turn to live... Boy does he swing the board!
There is no cheap board clear... In mage at least. And if you wanna paired with spell damage then it wont be a early game board clear.
Oh trust me, Im not dismissing. I think a lot what can work. Some are obvious choices some other are obvious no-nos.
Dragon Mage I will try soon! Tempo Mage I dislike but without a proper 1 drop, its even harder to make the cut (mana wyrm nerf was though), I used rotten applebumm which is a great card but i will try to use proud defender more. But its funny, all these could work if Mage had a proper 1 drop and/or actual survivability capabilities... Because all those decks can be scary but just rush down and clear Mage's board and you're good to go.
I use the 4 mana mage minion (totally forgot the name) that gives you a secret. Counterspell and Ice Barrier are awesome picks as of now. Now, as for Blasting Wave.. Its a 5 mana card that only deals 2 damage. Volcanic potion was a 3 mana deal 2 damage... Duskbreaker was a 3 mana deal 3 damage... And so on. Deal 2 damage to all at turn 5 wont do you no good against this aggro decks. Murlocs can raise their health. Paladin have divine shields and secrets at turn 5... Its very hard to make it useful.
Mage has freeze tools that could maybe help her get to her board clears. The new twin spell can be used to freeze one minion four turns in a row. Clearly there not enough there but maybe someone can be clever enough to find ways to patch it together into something worth trying. Mage is over here casting all these spells scrambling to get to an iffy late game. Meanwhile Hunter's doing the same thing, except he gets to play Zuljin and cast all of them over again for free. Kinda sorta better than Kalycgos.
yeah I agree, control mage feels really bad. You can still have fun vs hero power pass warrior (/jk), but anything remotely agressive is just impossible to deal with.
EDIT: to be fair most control decks feel terrible besides control warrior. Control shaman is bottom tier 2, handlock is tier 3, everything else is even worse than handlock. So it's not just a mage problem. I think losing so many defensive cards (tar creeper, defile, ...) hurt really bad.
Thanks for posting OP, I feel your pain as a Ctrl mage enthusiast, it's never been this bad ever
Exactly, why did paladin get Time Out, Nova - Doom is a 2 card 50/50 clear given the silence effects running around. and turn 5? run cheap spell damage and a 1/3 frog (should be at least a 1/4 to be able to survive anything) ?? no healing to survive anything. Everyone else's end game is much stronger and quicker!
All of those neutral minions are very good in mage decks as minions go and they have all mana cost ranges. Survivablity and heals and stalls are diminished for pretty much all classes so it's not just a mage issue and as others have mentioned, Mage isn't a heal class so it doesn't fit for mage to be a burst combo god and a defensive/stall/heal forever class at the same time
All of those neutral minions are very good in mage decks as minions go and they have all mana cost ranges. Survivablity and heals and stalls are diminished for pretty much all classes so it's not just a mage issue and as others have mentioned, Mage isn't a heal class so it doesn't fit for mage to be a burst combo god and a defensive/stall/heal forever class at the same time
The fact you called those cards "very good" just shows your unknowledge about Mage. Spellword is dependable on your hand and to be actually worth you would have to have 4-5 spells in your hand. You are better of using Twilight Drake. Not to mention, only Tempo Mage will a lot more spells than any type of mage deck. You just think "+ spell damage is an auto include on made decks!" and thats not the case.
Sunreaver Spy is awful on Mage. You would have to include secrets in your deck (and as of right now, its not worth doing it so) and you would also have to use Sunreaver on turn 5 as a combo. And its a bad turn 5 if thats your play. This is a curve card and its meant for Paladin.
Warmage is the only I can agree with.
Binder requires a set up. You better off using Thalnos or novice enginer if you want a draw card.
Violet Warden is bad. Unless you get it from Power of Creation.
Azerite is another slow tempo card and doesn't even have taunt. And the attack stat at turn 5 is laughable.
No comments on Exotic, kappa.
And thats where you are wrong. Mage is meant to be used as a heavy spell, control usage. Her powerful tool requires a lot of mana usage but by using it, you will be vulnerable. Thats why Ice Block existed. It let Mage run to late game and try to out value the opponent unless they could counter you. Now? Mage is weak on both early, mid and late game. Late game is arguable since you can do some nice swing tempo plays but that requires you to survive. Without any 1 drop, any early board clear or any good minion prior to turn 5, you are screwed against any deck.
Each class right now is capable of stabilize on early game and get healing/armor (besides hunter to some extent). Mage can't.
Note: Sorry for my lore-related post, if you don't like to read a lore related comment please jump that for the sake of you and me :)
The biggest fail of the Hearthstone is having so much neutral minions.
Meta will shape around always neutral minions. There should be more class-spesific cards in each expansion.
Cards should have been like 14 per class + 10 neutral or 13 per class + 18 neutral.
I mean, i really hate all of the classes hiding behind same Taunt minions. Ok, I love hearthstone but it is mechanically and lore-related wrong.
Neutral tribe tags are complete bullshit. How can a warlock or Mage controls a beast ? How can a Warrior control some kind of big Elemental ?
There should be more class-specific differences between classes.
And for mage, There should be more spells like Mirror Image and Ice Barrier. Arcane and Frost should protect mages instead of ridiculous LifestealElementals from Frost Lich Jaina or some kind of neutral taunt minion.
I hate how Hearthstone handles neutral cards really. Ok I love the game but I imagined different when they first announced hearthstone.
BLIZZARD ! Hear me, Please do more cards for classes and less cards for neutral and make tribes class specific !!! (ok, ok; i know these won't happen in any time)
Note Again: Sorry for my lore-related post, if you don't like to read a lore related comment please jump that for the sake of you and me :)
Memedeck-seeker. Always tries to build new decks. Hates tournements, streamers, netdecks and poor-o players. ah, but a tournement mode could be great !!!
Control Mage is pretty dead this expansion. Us mage players are gonna have to adopt a more midrange playstyle. Personally I ended up cutting Ray of Frost from my mage deck and I never seemed to have a good time to use it. Doomsayer is still a must for the time being. Silence isn't terribly prevalent and you don't always need to have frost nova in hand. Sometimes dropping it on turn 3 against a faster deck can buy you the time you need. I'm still experimenting but I'm also at a rank where developing a deck is near impossible.
Mage got turned into a class with no healing back in vanilla (aside from double barrier/block, to a major healing control class down the road due to Jaina. Meanwhile, classes like rogue get to remain more squishy than their cloth wearing WoW themed mage friends.
Mages got spoiled with super survivability since WotLK and now revert back to their old selves, minus Mana Wyrm. I don't really feel that bad right now and I play mage.
Ice Block felt always really dumb to me. It's only useful when you can kill the opponent next turn or maybe in conjunction with Reno Jackson. But to be fair I hate playing as and against that sort of "control deck". Maybe even with the cheesy Alexstrasza pyroblasting the opponent 1.5 times and then finishing them off with various other spells.
Arcane Artificer feels like a super simple and good card for the classic mage set. But in the end it does thematically make sense mages don't have much survivability and are rather "glass cannon"-like. Nevertheless I would also like to see more survivability just because I love the randomness/discover/value aspect of some mage cards.
I love mage but often feel the love for Hunter by Blizzard makes it a better Mage than Mage.
The secrets are better and are more difficult to play around. It has spells that deal damage and discover spells. It can summon good stat minions in the midgame, all while constantly pressuring you with hero power. It has arguably better tempo spells and better draw. Beast Call and Hunters Pack are incredible plays.
I love mage but often feel the love for Hunter by Blizzard makes it a better Mage than Mage.
The secrets are better and are more difficult to play around. It has spells that deal damage and discover spells. It can summon good stat minions in the midgame, all while constantly pressuring you with hero power. It has arguably better tempo spells and better draw. Beast Call and Hunters Pack are incredible plays.
Why would you dig this up. This is April's months post :/
I love mage but often feel the love for Hunter by Blizzard makes it a better Mage than Mage.
The secrets are better and are more difficult to play around. It has spells that deal damage and discover spells. It can summon good stat minions in the midgame, all while constantly pressuring you with hero power. It has arguably better tempo spells and better draw. Beast Call and Hunters Pack are incredible plays.
Plus, better highlander class minion and a hero card.
If Jaina still around mage control can try something, but the quest is garbage, don't have a hero card and being insanely unfair overnerfed to the ground completely destroy the class.
I love mage but often feel the love for Hunter by Blizzard makes it a better Mage than Mage.
The secrets are better and are more difficult to play around. It has spells that deal damage and discover spells. It can summon good stat minions in the midgame, all while constantly pressuring you with hero power. It has arguably better tempo spells and better draw. Beast Call and Hunters Pack are incredible plays.
Why would you dig this up. This is April's months post :/
Seems like Proud Defender and Sunreaver Warmage would help bigger spell mage get there.
I have to disagree on ray of frost only being good on tempo mage. I currently play a light variant of the deck recipe deck (took out Malacrass and added an acidic swamp ooze) and ray of frost has been amazing for me so far. It's versatile, cheap and I mainly use it for freezing, not for damaging. It's also great that when you use it the first time it doesnt shrink your hand size so that you can have a better astromancer turn. You don't actually have to remove the enemy minions. As long as I get to survive the first 5 turns with about half my health and I have a blizzard in my hand games tend to get won by the sheer amount of value you get from turn 7+ with astromancer, tools of creation and conjurer's calling.
Though I have to admit so far I didn't really face that many board swarm decks. Most of my enemies are bomb warriors or some kind of rogue (thief or lackey) and those enemies don't really go wide that often and when they do it's in turn 6+ when I can blizzard and flamestrike the board.
Tempo Mage... aff... I honestly feel dumb playing that haha. But i will give it a shot.
I want early cards but its really limited. Not of it will contribute for a constructive deck for mage, I've looked..
I want to try that now lmao.
If thats the case... I guess I will wait until the last expansion then lmao. Would be fun tho.
I've tried Proud defender. Its not bad and sometimes i use it but Im using Twilight Drake. Its a good stated minion to trade. But proud defender seems to be need as of now but at 4 mana.... Tar creeper shined because it was on turn 3. Aggro at turn 4 has already tools to deal with 6 health.
Mage 2 mana cards are good but very situational. Apprentice is only used in tempo (for best usage). Arugal will barely survive and his effect is on the following turn... Made no sense having him at 2 health (unless you spend more mana and use a card draw but that will fill with your hand way faster). The Tornado elemental is also on Tempo (for better performance). That leave us with Kadghar which is an awesome card. I thought he would be average but even if he has only 1 turn to live... Boy does he swing the board!
There is no cheap board clear... In mage at least. And if you wanna paired with spell damage then it wont be a early game board clear.
Oh trust me, Im not dismissing. I think a lot what can work. Some are obvious choices some other are obvious no-nos.
Dragon Mage I will try soon! Tempo Mage I dislike but without a proper 1 drop, its even harder to make the cut (mana wyrm nerf was though), I used rotten applebumm which is a great card but i will try to use proud defender more. But its funny, all these could work if Mage had a proper 1 drop and/or actual survivability capabilities... Because all those decks can be scary but just rush down and clear Mage's board and you're good to go.
I use the 4 mana mage minion (totally forgot the name) that gives you a secret. Counterspell and Ice Barrier are awesome picks as of now. Now, as for Blasting Wave.. Its a 5 mana card that only deals 2 damage. Volcanic potion was a 3 mana deal 2 damage... Duskbreaker was a 3 mana deal 3 damage... And so on. Deal 2 damage to all at turn 5 wont do you no good against this aggro decks. Murlocs can raise their health. Paladin have divine shields and secrets at turn 5... Its very hard to make it useful.
But thank you for the wholesome post!
How about play some other archetype of mage? How tired is the Control Mage meta? It's been going on for way too long.
Edit: I can't play Control Mage so I quit. TYVM
Mage has freeze tools that could maybe help her get to her board clears. The new twin spell can be used to freeze one minion four turns in a row. Clearly there not enough there but maybe someone can be clever enough to find ways to patch it together into something worth trying. Mage is over here casting all these spells scrambling to get to an iffy late game. Meanwhile Hunter's doing the same thing, except he gets to play Zuljin and cast all of them over again for free. Kinda sorta better than Kalycgos.
yeah I agree, control mage feels really bad. You can still have fun vs hero power pass warrior (/jk), but anything remotely agressive is just impossible to deal with.
EDIT: to be fair most control decks feel terrible besides control warrior. Control shaman is bottom tier 2, handlock is tier 3, everything else is even worse than handlock. So it's not just a mage problem. I think losing so many defensive cards (tar creeper, defile, ...) hurt really bad.
Thanks for posting OP, I feel your pain as a Ctrl mage enthusiast, it's never been this bad ever
Exactly, why did paladin get Time Out, Nova - Doom is a 2 card 50/50 clear given the silence effects running around. and turn 5? run cheap spell damage and a 1/3 frog (should be at least a 1/4 to be able to survive anything) ?? no healing to survive anything. Everyone else's end game is much stronger and quicker!
Might as well play pirate mage at this point :)
Violet Spellsword, Sunreaver Spy, Sunreaver Warmage, Spellbook Binder, Violet Warden, Azerite Elemental and Exotic Mountseller
All of those neutral minions are very good in mage decks as minions go and they have all mana cost ranges. Survivablity and heals and stalls are diminished for pretty much all classes so it's not just a mage issue and as others have mentioned, Mage isn't a heal class so it doesn't fit for mage to be a burst combo god and a defensive/stall/heal forever class at the same time
The fact you called those cards "very good" just shows your unknowledge about Mage. Spellword is dependable on your hand and to be actually worth you would have to have 4-5 spells in your hand. You are better of using Twilight Drake. Not to mention, only Tempo Mage will a lot more spells than any type of mage deck. You just think "+ spell damage is an auto include on made decks!" and thats not the case.
Sunreaver Spy is awful on Mage. You would have to include secrets in your deck (and as of right now, its not worth doing it so) and you would also have to use Sunreaver on turn 5 as a combo. And its a bad turn 5 if thats your play. This is a curve card and its meant for Paladin.
Warmage is the only I can agree with.
Binder requires a set up. You better off using Thalnos or novice enginer if you want a draw card.
Violet Warden is bad. Unless you get it from Power of Creation.
Azerite is another slow tempo card and doesn't even have taunt. And the attack stat at turn 5 is laughable.
No comments on Exotic, kappa.
And thats where you are wrong. Mage is meant to be used as a heavy spell, control usage. Her powerful tool requires a lot of mana usage but by using it, you will be vulnerable. Thats why Ice Block existed. It let Mage run to late game and try to out value the opponent unless they could counter you. Now? Mage is weak on both early, mid and late game. Late game is arguable since you can do some nice swing tempo plays but that requires you to survive. Without any 1 drop, any early board clear or any good minion prior to turn 5, you are screwed against any deck.
Each class right now is capable of stabilize on early game and get healing/armor (besides hunter to some extent). Mage can't.
I feel that part of this expansion is removing heavy healing/armor from classes that shouldn't have it.
No more lifesteal rush beasts for Hunter.
No spellstone for Warlock
And yes, no more artificer or FLJaina for mage.
This means that pushing damage early on means something. It also makes classes which do have healing more unique in that regard
Note: Sorry for my lore-related post, if you don't like to read a lore related comment please jump that for the sake of you and me :)
The biggest fail of the Hearthstone is having so much neutral minions.
Meta will shape around always neutral minions. There should be more class-spesific cards in each expansion.
Cards should have been like 14 per class + 10 neutral or 13 per class + 18 neutral.
I mean, i really hate all of the classes hiding behind same Taunt minions. Ok, I love hearthstone but it is mechanically and lore-related wrong.
Neutral tribe tags are complete bullshit. How can a warlock or Mage controls a beast ? How can a Warrior control some kind of big Elemental ?
There should be more class-specific differences between classes.
And for mage, There should be more spells like Mirror Image and Ice Barrier. Arcane and Frost should protect mages instead of ridiculous Lifesteal Elementals from Frost Lich Jaina or some kind of neutral taunt minion.
I hate how Hearthstone handles neutral cards really. Ok I love the game but I imagined different when they first announced hearthstone.
BLIZZARD ! Hear me, Please do more cards for classes and less cards for neutral and make tribes class specific !!! (ok, ok; i know these won't happen in any time)
Note Again: Sorry for my lore-related post, if you don't like to read a lore related comment please jump that for the sake of you and me :)
Memedeck-seeker. Always tries to build new decks. Hates tournements, streamers, netdecks and poor-o players.
ah, but a tournement mode could be great !!!
Control Mage is pretty dead this expansion. Us mage players are gonna have to adopt a more midrange playstyle. Personally I ended up cutting Ray of Frost from my mage deck and I never seemed to have a good time to use it. Doomsayer is still a must for the time being. Silence isn't terribly prevalent and you don't always need to have frost nova in hand. Sometimes dropping it on turn 3 against a faster deck can buy you the time you need. I'm still experimenting but I'm also at a rank where developing a deck is near impossible.
Mage got turned into a class with no healing back in vanilla (aside from double barrier/block, to a major healing control class down the road due to Jaina. Meanwhile, classes like rogue get to remain more squishy than their cloth wearing WoW themed mage friends.
Mages got spoiled with super survivability since WotLK and now revert back to their old selves, minus Mana Wyrm. I don't really feel that bad right now and I play mage.
In minion mage Witch's Cauldron can give you Witch's Brew. kappa
Ice Block felt always really dumb to me. It's only useful when you can kill the opponent next turn or maybe in conjunction with Reno Jackson. But to be fair I hate playing as and against that sort of "control deck". Maybe even with the cheesy Alexstrasza pyroblasting the opponent 1.5 times and then finishing them off with various other spells.
Arcane Artificer feels like a super simple and good card for the classic mage set. But in the end it does thematically make sense mages don't have much survivability and are rather "glass cannon"-like. Nevertheless I would also like to see more survivability just because I love the randomness/discover/value aspect of some mage cards.
I love mage but often feel the love for Hunter by Blizzard makes it a better Mage than Mage.
The secrets are better and are more difficult to play around. It has spells that deal damage and discover spells. It can summon good stat minions in the midgame, all while constantly pressuring you with hero power. It has arguably better tempo spells and better draw. Beast Call and Hunters Pack are incredible plays.
Why would you dig this up. This is April's months post :/
Plus, better highlander class minion and a hero card.
If Jaina still around mage control can try something, but the quest is garbage, don't have a hero card and being insanely unfair overnerfed to the ground completely destroy the class.
Just browsing and saw this. Am I wrong?
Just browsing and saw this. Am I wrong?
This thread is old as dirt who brought this one out of the graveyard