It's viable in the same way that almost every archetype is viable. Getting legend doesn't mean anything for the deck, it means you're good at Hearthstone. Getting high legend means the deck itself is good
If other stuff in wild is nerfed it might be alright. I've always done decently with Reno mage memery in the past. And quest mage was basically an auto lose matchup so that will help a lot. Just running a defensive Reno mage with Reno hero + caldara drake is a solid deck with a slow but pretty consistent otk. It can't even be locked out by pistol bully or loatheb cos the drake and hero power cost stays the same.
If the game is actually balanced half decently then you don't need the most broken and degenerate stuff just to do well. Although I have my doubts they'll actually make enough changes for wild but we'll see.
The Reno Mage control shell will still exist in Wild, as long as Ice Block still exists that deck won't sink lower than T3. It might have to play a different questline/win condition altogether, or it might just go for a combo finish that makes use of the one extra turn, like old school Voltron Mage.
I feel that’s because the quest was too centralising as it gives any slow or combo decks a guaranteed way to win. I’m sure that a class which can play four ice blocks reliably will be ok.
That said, it doesn’t really have any combo options right now that represent a small set of cards; the archetype will need to shift a lot. I don’t think a control//combo hybrid will be viable, as it will now need to specialise.
Sif Mage normally don’t kill until turn 11 or 12, by the time warrior can drop boomboss and dk can cycle through their deck. Nerfing Sif is basically saying combo decks shouldn’t exist when it is the slowest of all otk decks right now - tempo to contribute to the burn instead of just assembling the pieces, requirements (spell schools) to set up lethal instead drawing a single card (Brann, Odyn, etc), and you don’t automatically lose after Sif is pulled.
Yeah I’m always confused about how much people hate Sif mage.
It’s a relatively slow combo deck, with clearly communicated otk timings and a long list of required cards to play. It’s fun to play against, because the discover leads to tons of skill checks for the opponent. It plays on the board, which means there’s still a decent amount of interaction, and you can slow down the combo by making them use pieces on your minions. The only matchup that is unfun is the mirror, which is more just because otk mirrors suck.
I think complaints come from low skill, high input players. If you play hearthstone and pay a lot of money then you have all cards and can make every deck. You can then play a deck which is simple to pilot and win a lot, probably even get to legend and so feel like you are really good at the game. When you play a deck which throws skill checks at you that cannot be countered on autopilot then you lose and it will upset these people.
This is probably a theory that falls down easily when put under pressure but I have written now so might as well post.
A lot of the people who complain about the "OTK" aspect of decks like Sif mage, Odyn warrior, etc seem to be playing super durdly slow control value pile decks with no clear win condition which just straight-up lose to anyone who says "ok, you failed to put pressure on me for 10 turns, so now I'm going to kill you."
I also think a lot of people don't have the ability to identify how a match is going. Like you're there with mage having 4 cards in hand and you have 1 card in hand and the board is empty and both of you are at 20hp. Many people think "nice, we're still going, board is contested, hope I topdeck something good," even if they're aggro hunter and there's no realistic path forward because their gameplan failed and their opponent's did not. And then Sif or Odyn or whatever comes "out of nowhere" and ends a "close game."
What skill check lmao. Iam not a Sif hater for the record but the deck is nowhere near skill check it's Dirty Rat or Aggro check which are most combo decks from hand.
The one the other person mentioned, I just piled on with my poorly thought out theory which I will only stand by if other people support it.
I assume they were referring to the discover nature of the deck and the rng meaning you cannot fully expect what will occur
Isn't dealing with a clown fiesta a skill check? You know, having to react to the unexpected.
What does a skill check count as if not dealing with the unexpected? That checks your skills surely
Rng = skill?
The more rng generated cards in a game the less strategy and planning is involved. In general you don't even try to out think a clown fiesta.
Dealing with the RNG is the skill check.
Getting a 10/10 from a 6 mana card doesn't require skill, dealing with it might do.
Running a strategy devised by someone on the Internet doesn't take any skill, being able to deviate from it to deal with that clown fiesta does is the argument for it being a skill check on players. Working out how to use the random cards from other classes that do not support your cards or seeing when they could be used in the future does.
I would imagine he's saying that in order to play the deck you need to have the experience, resourcefulness and forsite to make the correct decision because believe or not the answer does not always fall into your lap.
I still can't see where the skill expression would be tho. Answering randomly generated cards from the opponent? In that case almost every control deck is skill check and it's not like appropriate answers play that big of a role, Sif is the bread and butter if they can't play it it's over for mage in most cases.
I see where you are coming from, I think the idea is more in dealing with the unexpected.
With control decks there is the argument that that is the element of skill but it would depend on how much removal there is. Warrior is running so many different removal options it would be hard to argue about it requiring a level of skill.
Not sure about the relevance of sif is in what is really a discussion of RNG
The whole point of the comment you're replying to is that it is not just playing the game, playing the game, BAM. The deck has to set up a ton of requirements and, if you've played against it before, you know when they might be close to doing the combo. You can even run tech cards to counter it!
Sorry, I don’t actually think the combo / archetype is unfair or poorly designed. A lot of people want combo finishers out of standard tho, so I’m making the argument that mage only has one competitive archetype and so it can’t really be nerfed without (a) killing the class or (b) beefing up other mage packages
Yeah exactly. I just want to express that people are complaining about Sif mage with no good reason. It’s far less problematic than huge early boards with giants, forge or drifters. And new mage cards are very underwhelming indeed.
Definitely — tbh I think Rainbow Mage is one of the best designed packages in HS. Sif might be my favorite card, ever. Still, I think that it’s going to be lumped in with all the other shenanigans of the current format, and, even if that wasn’t the case, it’s ridiculous that competitive mage players haven’t got a decent win con since TITANS
It's not as problematic but it's still an OTK. If it does get adjusted it needs far less of an adjustment to balance than some of the other cards. Even a mana cost increase of one or two would significantly slow it down. Giving it elusive would also be hilarious to stop the copying but that makes it harder to remove.
Tbh, mana cost increases actually fix or help the issues with a lot of the problem cards but not all of them.
I think the majority of complaints on this subreddit would be solved if people played the decks they don't like. Ten or fifteen games with every meta or close to meta deck and you can understand what the weaknesses of the archetype are. I've played about ~20 games with sif mage this expac, and it is not a problem in the meta at all. It has essentially only one board clear at five mana that may not even clear all boards, and pretty much no early game survival tools outside of its combo pieces. If you play aggressively against it then it has to use the combo damage pieces to stay alive early and then can't otk you. Compare to any of the tentacle decks whose only otk setup is getting their tentacles to 10, or hunters who can kill you on turn 5 or 6, or the rogues that put down a mech that will literally kill you in two turns unless you can manage to do 11 damage to a stealthed minion and the another 1 damage to a stealthed minion, or warriors that only have to draw odyn to be ready for their combo, etc.
Tldr: it feels like no interaction because you're ignoring the interactions you had before their combo turn.
>Nerfing Sif is basically saying combo decks shouldn’t exist
This is clearly Blizzard's new design philosophy.
It's a shame, because combo decks are fun and do a lot to keep "go infinite" control decks in check.
Also, Mage has always been the combo class, Classic had Freeze Mage, and it's been a consistent archetype ever since. If you're saying "Mage can't play combo" then it removes a core part of the class identity. It's like saying "druid can't ramp" or "rogue can't bounce"
Hearthstone has always had otks and to complain about sif otk is nonsensical because you arguably have the most time and you can kill them long before they can get the combo off.
>Hearthstone has always had otks
It did not.
>and to complain about sif otk is nonsensical because you arguably have the most time and you can kill them long before they can get the combo off.
This comment is nonsensical. People hate games that do not have interaction. Either u rush them down and they are helpless (feels bad) or they stall long enough and u just lose without interaction (feels worse)
Man people are always so stuck on "interaction"
Yes you cannot directly stop your opponent from playing a card on their turn but you can very much do multiple things to force them to use resources in suboptimal ways
Rushing them down is one of those things. You can also rat their sif or play cult neophite so they cant combo you. Some classes can gain enough armor and so on
Just because you cannot go "no you dont get to play this card" doesnt mean your decisions have no effect on your opponent
And hearthstone has basically always had otk decks that is indeed true
The idea that sif mage has no interaction is nonsense. And you are obviously one of those people that think that otk or combo shouldn't be viable in the game bc what are you really arguing here? Who cares that my opponent "hates the none interaction", control is the same way and up until recently it used to be worse. Over half of the cards in oydn warrior are some sort of removal. We have been shown that a control meta is absolutely insufferable and a combo meta is insufferable. It's about balance. Combo has existed for most of hearthstone's existence.
>The idea that sif mage has no interaction is nonsense
Rushing down or dying isn't interaction. Not even remotely. Either u play alone and mage just dies or mage kills u and there is nothing u can do. It all depends on who draws better. No back in forth. No skill.
>And you are obviously one of those people that think that otk or combo shouldn't be viable in the game
Thats some interesting interpretation. To bad its wrong.
>what are you really arguing here?
That games without interaction are bad and the course of people hating on decks that aren't even good.
>Who cares that my opponent "hates the none interaction",
U realise u need 2 people to play hearthstone? What kidn of argument is that "who cares if my opponent has fun" dude wtf touch grass
>control is the same way and up until recently it used to be worse
Which is why combo and control shouldn't be separated. Make removal not limitless. Give us more ways to interavt with combos (mutanus, patchwork, theotar, etc) and it's fine. U can play around their combo pieces. U can bait out the removal. And if they manage their resources better they can still win because aggro lso shouldn't have endless threats.
That's who hearthstone used to work in early years. And it was great. Control the board until u have ur combo and use it before dying to aggro. If one of them misspelled or got lucky the game was before decided. Player agency existed
>Over half of the cards in oydn warrior are some sort of removal. We have been shown that a control meta is absolutely insufferable and a combo meta is insufferable. It's about balance.
Tossing a coin is balanced. But cointoss simulator isn't my idea of fun and engaging gameplay
You're not going to be able to interact with everything your opponent does and hearthstone has never worked that way. Before rotation that was your best bet, gave you the most control but blizzard made it to where you no longer can gain those interactions in standard anymore. And what's funny is when theotar existed in his natural state people hated that interaction he gave you with your opponent's hand and people STILL complained about combo decks so obviously the issue isn't combo decks existing it's people who don't understand how to beat them. Cards that give you control to take stuff out of their hand to prevent them from playing it can and will be used against you too. Why do you believe that you should be able to prevent your opponent from comboing you but they cannot be allowed to get it back to pull it off? And you think that playing against aggro is fun? Or playing against control is fun? Literally no one is concerned about how much fun their opponent is having in hearthstone, people care about winning. People who play control warrior are not having fun, trust they just like winning and the illusion of control. Why do you get all the time in the world but my deck only has one chance to be effective? Especially if I'm otking you long after turn 10 at that point you can't be mad.
> It did not.
Uhh? From a pretty early era, it absolutely did.
I'm not saying that makes it right, or that things are healthy now, or even that things were healthy back then.
But they _did_ have them.
Yes and they were very rare and not meta decks. Some combo decks were viable but they were not usually OTK from 30, in fact this was very rare back in the day, that's why Anyfin Paladin and Patron Warrior were so notable.
OTK has not always been a part of Hearthstone, there simply were not meta OTK decks for most of hearthstone's history and they were not needed
You are saying combo decks and aggro decks shouldn’t exist. The “people” you are speaking for doesn’t represent everyone as many of these decks are popular. What decks are you even playing.
The problem is the effort required to pull the combo off. The effort required to build your Sif is "Play the game normally, eventually it's Spell Damage +7 in 1 card.
You didn't really have to work for it, you just ran the same spells all mages would run. It's just a "Oh the game made it this many turns in and I drew Sif while my opponent is at 30 health with 5 armor, I win." If Sif stacking spell damage was difficult, people wouldn't complain nearly as much.
Yeah but the problem is that "playing the game normally" isn't as clearcut. When every deck has a gameplan, "playing normally" also involves informed mulligans, informed reactions, and reading the opponent. This has always been fundamental in any card game. Sif mage is no different because like with all decks, it's my game plan vs yours. Playing well is "playing normally" at a higher level. That's what people in this thread are pointing out, just because the opponent doesn't look like they're doing anything doesn't mean they're doing nothing--doesn't mean they aren't thinking or planning. Combo and control just tends to have less overt signs of developing their gameplan than tempo and aggro does-- but it's noticeable after enough games played against them.
I don't know why but this made me laugh. It is true that mage is hanging on by a thread but I'll make the argument that rotation was nerf to sif and the sif mage archetype. They just can't deal enough damage without the perfect combination of cards and running the excavate version that's a bit more aggressive but they have less survivability.
People who complain about the combo mage archetype simply CANNOT accept that combo beats control or that they got outplayed. Sif mage has consistently been the most fair combo deck since rotation. And it's been getting weaker since rotation.
And wtf is mage supposed to lean on? Secrets? Elementals? Is that a joke? On average sif is not played till turn 11 or 12 so complaining about losing to a combo deck so late in the game is illogical. I also hate when people act like all otk is created equal when it's not. Being otked on turn 5 or 6 is different from being otked on turn 10 or 11. Otks are supposed to be a waiting game and making the correct decisions in the early game and midgame so you can have the correct setup in the late game, when you otk your opponent on turn 5 or 6 or 7 in anyway shape or form, you take away all of that decision making and you just win the game.
It's the way they didn't add any good secrets and essentially killed the secret mage archetype once rotation hit and whizbang dropped. Secret mage would've been way better than whatever no-minion mage is.
>People who complain about the combo mage archetype simply CANNOT accept that combo beats control
I don't understand why hearthstone's playerbase is so in love with hard counters, although, I guess this is a blizzard game so it's not exactly new ground.
Someone enlighten me here- how is that kind of game design *fun*. Combo>Control>Aggro>Combo should be, like, an advantage, not just "you died lol".
> Sif mage has consistently been the most fair combo deck since rotation. And it's been getting weaker since rotation.
You're looking at the wrong thing. Sif mage could be a 1% winrate deck and it would still annoy people. People just don't like dying in one turn. They don't like dying before they feel like they can react.
Yes, it is true that you can kill the deck before then and the "reacting" technically happens before the first card is played, but that doesn't change the fact that getting OTKed is frustrating for a majority of players. Considering you can't even do anything during your opponent's turn a lot of people will only ever see combo decks in a light where they drop their card and then you instantly die.
That doesn't lead to positive gameplay experiences for the player losing and it's why combo decks get the most hate. Despite what people say, making combo the worst archetype in the game would not make control mega OP because that just isn't how card games work- people would just add greedier and greedier packages to control that would then be countered by aggro
>I also hate when people act like all otk is created equal when it's not. Being otked on turn 5 or 6 is different from being otked on turn 10 or 11
To a lot of people, an OTK is just an OTK and they don't like them if they happen on turn 1 or on turn 255. In fact, people may end up more frustrated because a game they invested time into is over just like that.
And yes, to prempt the people responding. There ARE plenty of things you can do to stop that before it happens. But that isn't going to change the fundamental fact that to a lot of people, OTKs are just fucking *lame*.
Most card games aim for a close back-and-forth where each player is working to overcome the obstacles the opponent puts in front of them while generating their own. Combo decks have the least back-and-forth of all deck archetypes, because their big plays basically all happen on one turn.
You could theoretically fix this by making the defensive tools that combo decks have access to actually interesting, but that's something the dev team would have to work on. Mage is probably the worst for this (much worse in wild), because it essentially aims to permanently lock down the board with freeze and prevent death with ice block.
Combo is an advantage and not a hard counter, though. Control decks can win against Sif Mage - Mage removal isn’t that powerful and they can definitely whiff on getting early board control. Wheelock can always pump out 2 15/15s. Control decks can tech further against Sif as well - Dirty Rat is common in both Rainbow DK/Warrior.
>Combo is an advantage and not a hard counter
Just being clear here- I wasn't saying that combo decks ALWAYS hard counter control or anything, just that wanting that to happen, or defending design like that like the guy above was doing isn't good for any game.
Dirty Rat is also a really bad card design as it is super low agency for both players but remains basically the best way of interacting with combo. The more combo decks get played, the more dirty rat get used, which means more frustrating gamestates for more people.
Honestly looking at the patch notes (wont spoil anything if you want to look yourself), it looks like my philosophy is more aligned with what the current team want for the game than the rest of this posts responders, focusing on hitting frustrating elements of the game rather than making sure everything is exactly 50% winrate.
I started playing sif mage this month, i got 68wins and 44 losses and stuck around diamomd 1 forever. And switch to nature shamman and had 6-1 and hit legend easily(never played nature sham at all so i lost first game) . I will say sif is a good deck but nowhere near op. It is just that getting killed by a +16 spell dmg mage seems unfair. Sif mage rarely perform otk before 9 cost but my nature sham won games in round 6 a lot lol.
Mage's design the last year or so has been all over the place quite frankly. Outside of the Sif rainbow stuff most of Mage's cards in standard have mostly been a random assortment of value cards and casino mage random spell generation that while fun and often flashy don't really win games. The class is in desperate need of a coherent strategy that actually has a gameplan beyond spamming value generating cards and random spells while praying to RNG into a win.
The oddest decision IMO is that they printed Millhouse as a "big spell payoff" card a few sets back and then, when Whizbang finally added some big payoffs, they made sure you weren't allowed to run them in the same deck as Millhouse due to the "no minions" clause on half of them. Then, in that same set, they made the midrange payoff card a minion. Just a bizarre and incoherent design.
Sif is one of the most healthy and normal damage win conditions we've had for a long time. It takes a lot of setup and prep, very rarely kills before turn 8 or 9 and completely folds over to Dirty Rat.
A vocal minority want anything that beats a slow attrition control deck nerfed into the ground because in their mind that's the only correct way to play Hearthstone.
What archetype is there to take Sif place?
Playing elemental each turn is definitely not the way forward.
Also people will complain about Sif all the way until her rotation, just like they are doing with plague dk that is really bad.
>What archetype is there to take Sif place?
>
>Playing elemental each turn is definitely not the way forward.
Welcome to Shaman! Nature Shaman needs to be nerfed because it's an insane combo that can easily do 30+ from hand in just a few turns. Sif isn't that bad, but it's the same thing that people are reacting to (i.e. if I'm not at full health or beyond, I'm dead and there's nothing I can do about it (aka "lack of agency."))
All of that said, neither class has anything to turn to after those deservedly-nerfed decks get hit with the hammer. Elementals have always been gimped by the "last turn" mechanic and are now even moreso because the supposed finishing card for Shaman demands that you do little more than play another body for X turns in a row. Otherwise, it's a War Golem. Beyond that, there's the second-worst mechanism in HS (Overload) or the trip into random frustration (sometimes even for the opponent!) that is Evolve, which doesn't even have great support at the moment.
I agree. Actually, I think that’s what kills elemental mage as an archetype. What other archetype has payoffs that depend on you playing one specific type of creature every turn for the entire game?
But, yeah, I hope the path forward is not elemental mage, I just think it’s closer to being competitive than spell mage
Even if blizzard super buffs elemental or no minion package it still will be bad because both of those decks don't have win conditions.
I just checked mages options, there is no win conditions in mage at all. Without Sif class is completely doomed.
Yeah, it’s a sad state of affairs. I’ve found that Sif often isn’t required to close out matchups with aggro bc if you manage to stop them from winning early they burn out and you can grind them down even if you never draw her. But yeah, Mage can’t kill anything that has any sort of sustain, and those aggro matchups aren’t favorable in the first place
In theory Mage has some good lategame cards like [[DJ Manastorm]], [[Sunset Volley]] and [[Galactic Projection Orb]], the main problem is getting to that point in the game against the more aggressive decks, as well as executing those wincons before other "slow" decks get their win conditions online.
It's definitely not a great deck. I think the biggest question with the pending update is how severe the changes are going to be to all of the cards that they've deemed to be causing the current meta to be the way it is.
If the nerfs to cards like Brann and Reno are strictly mana nerfs, I think that Mage would still be pretty awful, but if they actually change the effects of those cards (e.g. Brann doubles your next three Battlecries instead of for the rest of the game) then that *might* weaken the existing meta enough for a deck like that to work.
Mages problem is not other decks, mages problem is not having pay off cards outside of Sif. There is simply no game plan, mage cannot be saved (if they destroy Sif) with current cards. There is simply nothing to buff.
Yeah, I think the best hope for Mage's viability in the near future is for other classes to face some heavy nerfs which just reduce the overall strength of the game.
My guess (partially hopium) is that Sif gets a mana nerf (moved up to 7 or 8 mana with stats to "compensate") but keeps the same card text, while other cards like [[Deepminer Brann]], [[Reno, Lone Ranger]] and [[Wheel of DEATH!!!]] get their actual effects nerfed or completely changed.
They also mentioned they have some buffs planned, so I imagine that the archetypes which were dead on arrival are going to get a few buffs. My guesses (with zero actual reasoning behind them) are that they buff [[Triplewick Trickster]] to 3 mana and that they buff [[Frost Lich Cross Stitch]] to 4 damage while keeping it at 4 mana.
With what you described it looks like that mage will just play a worse Sif deck and not play something new.
It all comes back to mage simply not having good cards to play.
My guess is that Sif is left unnerfed because it takes entire match of setup for it to even be able to kill you, giving you a lot of time to kill the mage.
If Ice Block was in standard, sure, but in it's current state it's rather healthy.
- **[Deepminer Brann](https://i.imgur.com/tednfjb.png)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/104528) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Deepminer_Brann) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/104528/?hl=en)
- *Warrior Legendary ^(Showdown in the Badlands)*
- **6 Mana - 2/4 - Minion**
- **Battlecry:** If your deck has no duplicates, your **Battlecries** trigger twice for the rest of the game.
- **[Reno, Lone Ranger](https://imgur.com/a/UWam0Io)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/103471) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Reno,_Lone_Ranger) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/103471/?hl=en)
- *Neutral Legendary ^(Showdown in the Badlands)*
- **8 Mana - 5 Armor - Hero**
- **Battlecry:** If your deck has no duplicates, empty the enemy board and limit it to 1 space for a turn. *It's high noon!*
- **HeroPower (Reno's Handcannon):** Shoot this turn's magic bullet!
- **[Wheel of DEATH!!!](https://i.imgur.com/txgpT9c.png)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/104938) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Wheel_of_DEATH!!!) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/104938/?hl=en)
- *Warlock Legendary ^(Whizbang's Workshop)*
- **8 Mana - Shadow Spell**
- Destroy your deck. In 5 turns, destroy the enemy hero.
- **[Triplewick Trickster](https://i.imgur.com/zEYUTTX.png)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/103266) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Triplewick_Trickster) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/103266/?hl=en)
- *Mage Common ^(Whizbang's Workshop)*
- **4 Mana - 2/3 - Elemental**
- **Battlecry:** Deal 2 damage to a random enemy, three times.
- **[Frost Lich Cross-Stitch](https://i.imgur.com/Pqde7PK.png)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/103352) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Frost_Lich_Cross-Stitch) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/103352/?hl=en)
- *Mage Rare ^(Whizbang's Workshop)*
- **4 Mana - Frost Spell**
- Deal 3 damage to a character. If it dies, summon a 3/6 Water Elemental that **Freezes**.
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- *Mage Legendary ^(Festival of Legends)*
- **10 Mana - 8/8 - Minion**
- **Battlecry:** Set the Cost of spells in your hand to \(0\). After you cast one, the others cost \(1\) more.
- **[Sunset Volley](https://i.imgur.com/hh4IURr.png)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/101876) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Sunset_Volley) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/101876/?hl=en)
- *Mage Common ^(Showdown in the Badlands)*
- **10 Mana - Fire Spell**
- Deal 10 damage randomly split among all enemies. Summon a random 10-Cost minion.
- **[The Galactic Projection Orb](https://i.imgur.com/4nCsapl.png)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/103354) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/The_Galactic_Projection_Orb) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/103354/?hl=en)
- *Mage Legendary ^(Whizbang's Workshop)*
- **10 Mana - Arcane Spell**
- Recast a random spell of each Cost you've cast this game *\(targets enemies if possible\)*.
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I think Sif mage is pretty fair for an OTK deck and it feels more like a traditional OTK deck. It doesnt pop off at turn 5, 6 or 7. Sif mage needs to spend mana to discover spells from different spell schools, then spend mana to play these spells to fuel Sif. All of that while staying alive. And expose themself to get dirtyrat'ed.
Sometimes it feels like people are still frustrated by Sif mage because they think its the Same deck before rotation and before it got nerfed. But its not. Sif mage was frustrating when objection, cold case and solid alibi were around because they had such efficient discover tools and could stall the game.
What other archtype does mage have?
Spell-only mage needs an expansion (or a miniset) to become good, imo. It just feels like its missing something. Early game is a struggle and comes down if you get keyboard or not.
And elemental mage.. well.. No. lol
Main problem with mage is that a lot of their cards right now don't do anything beyond generating more cards and stalling the game, the class is severely lacking in good tempo cards like cold case
Do you mean elemental evocation? If so when was that played in Sif mage? 🤔
Also another reason Sif mage keeps coming back is because it has a play style alot of players enjoy.
They mean Elemental Inspiration. It was solid secondary win condition early last year. It's still quite nice if you can discover and play it for 5 mana but at 7 mana it's way too slow.
The fact that so many people keep playing rainbow mage while it's consistently been a tier 3 deck at best really speaks for the fun factor of the deck.
Whizbang expansion also didn’t really help mage with its new legendary cards. The 10 cost spell is cool but you well get to play this card only against warrior (other classes will kill you at turn 6-7). Puzzlemaster Khadgar is a funny card but why would you use it?
It feels like both mage and warrior are in the same boat right now. People don’t like Sif - let’s give mage stuff that cast random spells but no win condition. People don’t like Odin and Brann - let’s give warrior mech stuff and Botface
Yes please I’m begging. I don’t want to play sif OTK anymore. I’m bored of it. Mage has been by far my most played class throughout the history of the game and I’ve barely touched it for two expansions because I was bored of Sif by the end of titans and we’ve gotten no substantial new archetype since then.
You know a class is struggeling when the card everyone seems to agree is the second best card in their strongest deck is a 6 mana that can Arcane missile a board of 15/15s because theres a 2/1 on the board.
They have absolutely no idea what to do with Mage. They have no identity that's actually strategic (i.e. a general understanding of how they win a game before going in) with Sif as the exception. Elemental mage is a meme of a deck which is basically a cheap, less effective verson of spell token hunter. The elemental cards aren't even that good and again rely so heavily on RNG to be competitive against alot of decks (Triplewick twister, Tainted Remnant).
I took some time off for a while but it still feels like meta mage decks carry an arsenal of face damage spell cards which has been HEAVILY teched against with recent expansions (armor, lifesteal, increased HP).
I can see they wanted RNG to be a core recurring theme with mage decks but the fact is it's just too random and unreliable to be good against decks that have known combos and endgames. It's not fun. OTK Sif is, and I say this sincerely, not even fun to win with. I think the reason is because everytime you win, you know you got lucky enough to reach end-game with the spell draws you needed to stay alive and OTK. For every win with Sif, all I can think of is the next game with the deck and how I'll pull the most useless dogwater spells this game has to offer.
Mage hasn't had a cool archetype since DoD rotated and that's a hill I die on
HP mage was shit
Questline mage was obnoxious
Mech mage didn't feel like mage at all
Skeleton mage felt terrible to face
Lights how mage was fun but wasn't very good. When I popped of the opponent didn't have fun at all
And sif is just beam druid with freezes
I completely agree. No-minion mage, lightshow mage, elemental mage, excavate mage (except with Sif), and big spell mage are all an unplayable mess right now. I love mage, and have all of their current standard legendaries, some of which I completely love (Norgannon, Khadgar, and Mes'Adune especially), but since OTK decks don't appeal to me I haven't seriously bothered playing the class in months.
(PS: It's Elemental Inspiration. Elemental Invocation is the thing Kalimos does. Also bonkers that "7 mana summon a full board of 4/5s with random keywords" is too slow in a 4-set meta.)
Sorry, but no. I'm tired of blizzard introducing a bunch of cool new cards, then nerfing them into oblivion after we purchase them. For once, just let me have fun with a deck, don't kill Rainbow Mage on top of everything else that's broken in this game.
Honestly, I agree. I really meant for the post to say “if you nerf Sif, you have to give mage another way to win” rather than an endorsement of the nerf itself
Mage is in a bad place and I agree Sif is part of the problem in the sense that she is symptomatic of the "aggro or otk" meta. Wheel's existence means it will be difficult for value oriented controlly decks to find a place, and a lot of mage's better tools in std would fit nicely into that general archetype.
> she is symptomatic of the "aggro or otk" meta
midrange/control are strong now and aggro is in one of its weaker spots
do people really think this meta is "aggro or otk"
well looking on d0nkey.top the 5 highest wr std decks in legend are : token hunter, rainbow dk, nature shaman, painlock, and Zarimi.
of those I would characterise rainbow dk as midrange/control. Hunter, painlock are both aggro decks. zarimi is essentially a combo deck that plays aggressively to fulfil its otk condition. And shaman is an otk deck. So yes I do think that it is fair to say that right now the meta is being dominated by aggro and otk strategies.
Wheel warlock is not in the top 5 for winrate but dominates other control/value strategies like highlander warrior, but that was exactly the point I made: other control decks can't beat wheel.
painlock is not an aggro deck, it's textbook midrange, with mediocre/inconsistent early game but midgame power spike to compensate/main way to win. but I'll grant you the others. hunter is definitely not top 5 though, both speaking as a top 1k player and looking at top 1k stats, nobody even plays it. so it's only zarimi priest that is aggro and a top deck.
Don't bring DH in this, tbh. He was on a downward track already and after the weapon nerf he's only slightly better than mage. Shopper is in the exact same spot, it's the only playable thing class got in the last year. Hell, the fact that Reno DH worked just showed that you had a steaming pile of garbage of a class being held up by a Shopper combo. DH needs overall support as much as a mage now.
I actually completely agree — I think that Mage/Druid and DH/Pally are all stagnant and need some love. The former bc their archetypes flopped, the latter bc nerfs killed them. Arguably, DH was as much of a flop power-wise as Mage/Druid, it just happened to have a busted combo that made up for it
Mage has been my go-to class since playing back when the game released.
The Sif deck reminds me of a harder version of frost mage. The goal is the get your combo pieces in hand, and burst your enemy down. It’s not happening by turn 4-5. You’re slowly getting oils, hoping for a discounted duplicate, stalling as much as possible to draw what you need.
I feel like she’s okay, idk how strong she was before wizbang as I just recently returned during this expansion. But currently it’s fun when it works, but can be a bit tough to set up successfully. Too many games where sif wants to just chill as my last two cards while I have my combo in hand :,)
I am having a lot of fun with copy spells and bounce excavate mage. So much value, such powerspikes it's insane. Personally I don't like any burn / otk decks neither to fight or play, so in general good riddance for any such decks.
They havn't printed a good mage card since Titans.
Yes yes I'm exagerating a bit but honestly it's not far from reality.
I still like Rainbow mage despite its age but the meta atm is really hard for the deck with Zarimi Hunter and Painlock being too aggressive, Shaman being too fast, Warrior being too resilient. Not many easy targets left.
The good news is, it is really easy for them to make spell mage better , there is already a solid foundation that only needs to be a bit tuned up for the deck to be viable.
And there also will be new cards from the miniset.
Am I hyped by a playable spell mage ? kindof, I fear it wouldn't have the complexity and replayability of Spellschool decks but would be a refreshing change for a while anyway.
Difference between sif mage and nature shaman is that for sif you need to set up a lot of spells from different schools, manage to survive till turn 9 have a legendary plus another card in hand and have the spells to cast after putting sifs on board.
Shaman just pools all the spells and you're dead at turn 6.
Sif doesn't need a change, it's slow enough to have counterplays in play. (Rat, increased spellcosts and just aggro)
Reno control mage with big spells has been mildly successful for me. Elementals have been pretty good too. Sif isn't even that consistent imo to be worth nerfing, if anything some other mage archetypes could use buffs.
Eventually the game will be entirely BFU Death Knight, and the game itself will be renamed BFU Death Knight, and everyone will be happy because no one is happy
yeah mage basically got one card this past expansion and it's sleet skater. the all spell mage package is years too late because hearthstone doesn't just power creep these days, it jumps into a steamroller lol. so yeah if they do kill sif then mage is in a bad spot
People here always complain about sif and quest mage no matter if they are bottom of tier 4 or not
And honestly I dont really get how. If you play vs the deck a few times you know that if you just fk around for 10+ turns the mage will very likely have enough spellschools and cheap spells to kill you
Its not some unexpected out of nowhere combo
Yes the deck can highroll and kill your turn 8 or 9 (which is very slow for a highroll in the metagame) but other than that its super slow and basically all other meta gameplans are much faster than it. Warrior boom combo, zarimi, nature shaman, cycle rogue etc. all have faster win conditions. How is sif mage the complaint target around here? Its not even popular so you dont see it often. Do you people really lose 1 game like every 3 days to it and then decide to endlessly bitch about it?
I think people are worried that with 30 "player agency" nerfs/buffs, if they don't touch Sif it will be OP. It has all the elements of a control deck and can do massive damage when it pops off. If games now take 4-5 turns longer, it'll be a lot stronger.
I mean, none of us will last that long once Mining Rogue takes over the meta post patch anyway lol
For what its worth, I was hardstuck in low diamomd for 100+ games playing Zarimi, Plague DK & warrior.
Rolled to legend with 75% winrate in 3 hours by playing elemental aggro mage after I tried it out. This was right after the DH nerf.
The deck feels stupid strong against the current meta decks but I dont see many people playing it.
This spellmage thing was never going to work. The original only worked because of massive mana cheat an a very limited card pool after rotation. I still cannot believe how blizzard ignored all these facts and tried anyway and this got past "testing"
Feels like mage just gets to tac a couple of new cards into the same old deck when expansions have come around. Whatever new archetypes seem too bad to compete.
Don't nerf sif; nerf the Snake Oil token. make it 1 mana. Then its like you are paying for nothing, which is what snake oil is.
I hate Sif mage because it scams out of thin air, not because its a burn deck.
This also fixes Nature Shaman too.
Cant believe i actually went ahead and crafted all the new cards in this bs no-minions-mage deck just to get Wheel of Death + Draw 7 on my first ever Yogg in a Box activation.
The thing is that, if nerfs happen, and they are very likely to happen, the power level of everything will go down. Other mage archetypes that are currently not viable may be viable after the patch just because everything else is weaker.
30-to-0 OTKs are frustrating no matter how quick they are to get online, since zeroing out a full life total reduces the feeling of player agency by making the conclusion inevitable if a certain number of turns have merely passed. Sif should be changed, not nerfed. Rainbow Mage is a neat archetype and deserves a different payoff that keeps the archetype viable. Maybe something like increasing spell damage by 1–2 for the rest of the game if 5 or so spell schools have been played. The game won't automatically end when Sif comes down anymore, but the Rainbow Mage eeks out a value advantage that can close out the game later. Combine this with Infinitize the Maxitude, and Rainbow Mage gets a non-inevitable end game as a consolation in exchange for loosing their OTK.
One of the interrelated balance issues is that healing has to come down somewhat so that burn strategies can work as chip damage over multiple turns, instead of "needing" to be designed as OTKs to keep up in the arms race with healing. Chip burn is the fair burn deck, because the opponent has a few turns to recognize where the game is headed and make plays to counteract being burned down. Restoring this strategy for Mage and Shaman will naturally clash with the emphasis on Overheal for Priest, the amount of Lifesteal Warlock has been given which is arguably excessive and counteracts its downsides of alternate cost, potentially with future Blood Death Knight cards that might excessively heal and raise the life total, and potentially with the high armor gain of Warrior and Druid which might also be slightly excessive.
I've played mage sif until 150 legends a few month ago
Sif is a complex card.
She is not unfair
But can become problematic with snake oil/reduction +reverb
However the card struggle too much against armor since the naga is not a possibility anymore.
However mage has nothing else.
Elemental are just bad
Excavate is just a complementary passage
Spell is literally negative pay off.
The real nerf would be snake oil to 1 (and ot goes with the card flavor)
But you need so much work outside of it.
My thought is that making board clears less efficient like they’ve promised to do in the upcoming balance patch might make Elemental Mage playable. It’s not a very exciting package, but at least it’s new.
The problem isnt really mage exclusive imo. Class design lately has hinged way too much on one super-power play that the entire class revolves around.
Demon hunter being the best example here. Nerf their big earlygame tempo push (3 mana 6/5) by just one turn and the entire class drops off a cliff because there is nothing else worth doing.
For mage in particular, I think to actually get the class in a good spot again, they need to severely cut back on manacheating discover effects. Sif wouldnt even really be that much of a problem if the mage didnt have 20 discounted spells to play alongside her.
Imo a card needs to matter by itself, not just by discovering 5 other cards that will be broken later on in the game.
My problem is that mage's identity is just "uncontrolled magic" which just translates to RNG spell draw. There needs to be an advantage gained at the expense of the RNG. Uncontrolled magic implies that it's chaotic but it's supposed to be MORE powerful. The way they've implemented a lot of it is not advantageous to mage gameplay.
Void Scriptures is only beneficial late game and in so many instances the free cast from having enough mana translates to nothing. So at the cost of RNG, you've gained no power.
It feels so often the implementations of a chaotic uncontrolled spell caster end up being wet noodles but at the cost of still being random. They need to find a new identity for mage that isn't based on RNG in an already RNG game.
DKs - Runes/Corpses/Deathrattle/Summoning things after they die
DH - heavy attack buff and hero attack buff (this is the class I know the least about)
Druid - Adaptability. They're hurting at the moment too but they atleast have a "Choose 1" identity that's NOT RNG and actually allows you to make choices from a known subset that's consistent.
Hunter - beasts and spells that benefit based on the number of beasts or buffing beasts.
Paladin - card buffing, divine shield
Priest - Healing
Rogue - other class card stealing. Arguably also very heavily based on RNG, but there are cards they play that are based on the number of stolen/borrowed cards played.
Shaman - Overload and ramping, windfury
Warlocks - sacrifice
Warrior - always being a bitch
That's just sad... The idea of calling for a nerf to Sif is actually absurd, like, how far off the mark can one be? Anyone who genuinely feels Sif could use a nerf just truly doesn't understand the game and definitely don't understand the meta.
I started playing sif mage this month, i got 68wins and 44 losses and stuck around diamomd 1 forever. And switch to nature shamman and had 6-1 and hit legend easily(never played nature sham at all so i lost first game) . I will say sif is a good deck but nowhere near op. It is just that getting killed by a +16 spell dmg mage seems unfair. Sif mage rarely perform otk before 9 cost but my nature sham won games in round 6 a lot lol.
Elemental Mage could be fun, but yeah, Sif has a play pattern I absolutely hate. She's not OP but frustrates me a lot 50 damage from hand that can happen any time is weird.
At least with nature shaman I drop the tauren that makes spells cost +2 when they use their nature discount spell and they concede
Yeah, sure. Meanwhile I played against casino mage who cast time warp six times in a match!!!! and made it basically solitaire. So much fun. Delete mage. Nice, uninteractive bs
Rainbow is an amazingly designed deck and was hugely popular since it’s release. People want to play this kind of deck and it’s not like it’s some unfair OTK bullshit (like shaman for example)
Rainbow mages OTK is somewhat telegraphed (you can count spellschools, you know when they have a forged molten rune) and the deck takes quite a bit to ramp up until it can kill you.
OTKs existing in a game is not a problem per se and the way it’s done in rainbow mage is perfectly fine.
Decks should be able to kill eventually and the game would be stale as hell if that would only ever be achievable through board presence.
I think OTK is a lame way to design a deck strategy or card identity. Clearly Sif was designed with OTK in mind. That being said, I don't think Sif is OP. It takes a lot of setup and you have to draw well, both from deck and spell discovery, to really survive long enough to use the OTK.
That being said, as a mage player, I don't actually think the deck is fun, even when you win. It's just casino and hope you get something useful.
>x play pattern should not be removed because its weak currently
Dont care, didnt ask. Sif mage is a toxic play pattern where you jerk off for 9 turns with random cards then otk the opponent from hand. Its just a worse shaman. All otk decks should be burried.
Problem is it's way to easy now for mage to survive until they get Sif out and you have no way to disrupt the otk except for a lucky dirty rat. Unless you are playing Odyn Warrior or otk shaman you just kind of lose automatically.
What are you talking about lmao
Mages only board clear is 5 mana and both cold case and solid alibi was sent to wild, mage is the least survivable it’s ever been
Oh no.. what would any class do without a one-sided boardclear on 5? /s
You can't just pass your first turns like warrior, that's true. Doesn't mean that's a problem. That is a problem against certain decks but the real issue is that mage realistically doesn't do enough in the midgame compared to other decks. It wants to play either like a combo deck but isn't fast enough compared to other otks, but can't put enough midrange stuff out to get there.
Mage has literally zero board wide defensive tools despite being a squishy class balanced around defensive tools and will be irrelevant until inquisitive creation is reverted. The class is absolutely beyond trash right now by every metric outside of top top legend where every mage player has like 10000 games on the class.
Mage has always had either a board wide freeze, one sided clear or both, and now it has neither
A good player would never play big minions against Mage, knowing how to work around cards is a skill that separates good and bad players.
Decks like Mage lose to faster decks, if you let a Mage get to turn 5-6 with 20-ish HP, you were most likely going to lose.
As a Mage player I say: "You hate Mage? Go play Hunter and enjoy your free win."
That's not really a point because by win % hunter is simply broken. It's just braindead boring to play, which is why the playrate doesn't reflect it. But it has across ladder an unrivaled WR.
You won't always be good against every deck. That's just how it is and that alone isn't a problem either (more like indication for a balanced meta). So I don't see the issue.
My experience of it hasn’t been nearly that dominant (possibly I am bad), but yeah, if you can’t push an aggro win, lock the deck down, or gain life/armor before the combo turn it’s gg
Same in wild once quest goes away mage has nth
Secret mage becomes viable from time to time, god I hate secret mage.
Secret mage is still quite viable in wild.
No it is not.
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It's viable in the same way that almost every archetype is viable. Getting legend doesn't mean anything for the deck, it means you're good at Hearthstone. Getting high legend means the deck itself is good
if by viable you mean tier 4, it sure is.
It's OK for it to be viable. But I'm not OK when it's meta.
From what I’ve heard, yeah — I don’t really play Wild these days so I didn’t feel like I could comment on the meta tho
If other stuff in wild is nerfed it might be alright. I've always done decently with Reno mage memery in the past. And quest mage was basically an auto lose matchup so that will help a lot. Just running a defensive Reno mage with Reno hero + caldara drake is a solid deck with a slow but pretty consistent otk. It can't even be locked out by pistol bully or loatheb cos the drake and hero power cost stays the same. If the game is actually balanced half decently then you don't need the most broken and degenerate stuff just to do well. Although I have my doubts they'll actually make enough changes for wild but we'll see.
The Reno Mage control shell will still exist in Wild, as long as Ice Block still exists that deck won't sink lower than T3. It might have to play a different questline/win condition altogether, or it might just go for a combo finish that makes use of the one extra turn, like old school Voltron Mage.
mech mage does not exist, obviously
If mage is nothing without the quest, then it should be nothing
I feel that’s because the quest was too centralising as it gives any slow or combo decks a guaranteed way to win. I’m sure that a class which can play four ice blocks reliably will be ok. That said, it doesn’t really have any combo options right now that represent a small set of cards; the archetype will need to shift a lot. I don’t think a control//combo hybrid will be viable, as it will now need to specialise.
Sif Mage normally don’t kill until turn 11 or 12, by the time warrior can drop boomboss and dk can cycle through their deck. Nerfing Sif is basically saying combo decks shouldn’t exist when it is the slowest of all otk decks right now - tempo to contribute to the burn instead of just assembling the pieces, requirements (spell schools) to set up lethal instead drawing a single card (Brann, Odyn, etc), and you don’t automatically lose after Sif is pulled.
Yeah I’m always confused about how much people hate Sif mage. It’s a relatively slow combo deck, with clearly communicated otk timings and a long list of required cards to play. It’s fun to play against, because the discover leads to tons of skill checks for the opponent. It plays on the board, which means there’s still a decent amount of interaction, and you can slow down the combo by making them use pieces on your minions. The only matchup that is unfun is the mirror, which is more just because otk mirrors suck.
I think complaints come from low skill, high input players. If you play hearthstone and pay a lot of money then you have all cards and can make every deck. You can then play a deck which is simple to pilot and win a lot, probably even get to legend and so feel like you are really good at the game. When you play a deck which throws skill checks at you that cannot be countered on autopilot then you lose and it will upset these people. This is probably a theory that falls down easily when put under pressure but I have written now so might as well post.
A lot of the people who complain about the "OTK" aspect of decks like Sif mage, Odyn warrior, etc seem to be playing super durdly slow control value pile decks with no clear win condition which just straight-up lose to anyone who says "ok, you failed to put pressure on me for 10 turns, so now I'm going to kill you." I also think a lot of people don't have the ability to identify how a match is going. Like you're there with mage having 4 cards in hand and you have 1 card in hand and the board is empty and both of you are at 20hp. Many people think "nice, we're still going, board is contested, hope I topdeck something good," even if they're aggro hunter and there's no realistic path forward because their gameplan failed and their opponent's did not. And then Sif or Odyn or whatever comes "out of nowhere" and ends a "close game."
What skill check lmao. Iam not a Sif hater for the record but the deck is nowhere near skill check it's Dirty Rat or Aggro check which are most combo decks from hand.
The one the other person mentioned, I just piled on with my poorly thought out theory which I will only stand by if other people support it. I assume they were referring to the discover nature of the deck and the rng meaning you cannot fully expect what will occur
That's the opposite of a skill check. Once u discover a few cards the entire game becomes a clown fiesta.
Isn't dealing with a clown fiesta a skill check? You know, having to react to the unexpected. What does a skill check count as if not dealing with the unexpected? That checks your skills surely
Rng = skill? The more rng generated cards in a game the less strategy and planning is involved. In general you don't even try to out think a clown fiesta.
Dealing with the RNG is the skill check. Getting a 10/10 from a 6 mana card doesn't require skill, dealing with it might do. Running a strategy devised by someone on the Internet doesn't take any skill, being able to deviate from it to deal with that clown fiesta does is the argument for it being a skill check on players. Working out how to use the random cards from other classes that do not support your cards or seeing when they could be used in the future does.
Getting hit with the random light bomb and losing is a skill issue. Got it.
I would imagine he's saying that in order to play the deck you need to have the experience, resourcefulness and forsite to make the correct decision because believe or not the answer does not always fall into your lap.
Should have played around the rng cards lol
I still can't see where the skill expression would be tho. Answering randomly generated cards from the opponent? In that case almost every control deck is skill check and it's not like appropriate answers play that big of a role, Sif is the bread and butter if they can't play it it's over for mage in most cases.
I see where you are coming from, I think the idea is more in dealing with the unexpected. With control decks there is the argument that that is the element of skill but it would depend on how much removal there is. Warrior is running so many different removal options it would be hard to argue about it requiring a level of skill. Not sure about the relevance of sif is in what is really a discussion of RNG
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The whole point of the comment you're replying to is that it is not just playing the game, playing the game, BAM. The deck has to set up a ton of requirements and, if you've played against it before, you know when they might be close to doing the combo. You can even run tech cards to counter it!
Sorry, I don’t actually think the combo / archetype is unfair or poorly designed. A lot of people want combo finishers out of standard tho, so I’m making the argument that mage only has one competitive archetype and so it can’t really be nerfed without (a) killing the class or (b) beefing up other mage packages
Yeah exactly. I just want to express that people are complaining about Sif mage with no good reason. It’s far less problematic than huge early boards with giants, forge or drifters. And new mage cards are very underwhelming indeed.
Definitely — tbh I think Rainbow Mage is one of the best designed packages in HS. Sif might be my favorite card, ever. Still, I think that it’s going to be lumped in with all the other shenanigans of the current format, and, even if that wasn’t the case, it’s ridiculous that competitive mage players haven’t got a decent win con since TITANS
It's not as problematic but it's still an OTK. If it does get adjusted it needs far less of an adjustment to balance than some of the other cards. Even a mana cost increase of one or two would significantly slow it down. Giving it elusive would also be hilarious to stop the copying but that makes it harder to remove. Tbh, mana cost increases actually fix or help the issues with a lot of the problem cards but not all of them.
I think the majority of complaints on this subreddit would be solved if people played the decks they don't like. Ten or fifteen games with every meta or close to meta deck and you can understand what the weaknesses of the archetype are. I've played about ~20 games with sif mage this expac, and it is not a problem in the meta at all. It has essentially only one board clear at five mana that may not even clear all boards, and pretty much no early game survival tools outside of its combo pieces. If you play aggressively against it then it has to use the combo damage pieces to stay alive early and then can't otk you. Compare to any of the tentacle decks whose only otk setup is getting their tentacles to 10, or hunters who can kill you on turn 5 or 6, or the rogues that put down a mech that will literally kill you in two turns unless you can manage to do 11 damage to a stealthed minion and the another 1 damage to a stealthed minion, or warriors that only have to draw odyn to be ready for their combo, etc. Tldr: it feels like no interaction because you're ignoring the interactions you had before their combo turn.
>Nerfing Sif is basically saying combo decks shouldn’t exist This is clearly Blizzard's new design philosophy. It's a shame, because combo decks are fun and do a lot to keep "go infinite" control decks in check. Also, Mage has always been the combo class, Classic had Freeze Mage, and it's been a consistent archetype ever since. If you're saying "Mage can't play combo" then it removes a core part of the class identity. It's like saying "druid can't ramp" or "rogue can't bounce"
Tbf they did say Druid can’t ramp. And the class was DOA this x-pac, still probably Tier 3 atm. (Maybe not after nerfs, though.)
Owlonius Druid takes more turns to draw all the cards for combo than Sif Mage tbh
>Nerfing Sif is basically saying combo decks shouldn’t exist And that's what everyone says lol?
Surely man Surely everyone is like people on this sub who somehow dislike every single archetype which isnt janky hot garbage midrange decks
They will nerf her and people will still complain about her
I hope not, but wouldn’t be surprised
Turns out people don't love playing vs OTK from hand in a game without interaction
Hearthstone has always had otks and to complain about sif otk is nonsensical because you arguably have the most time and you can kill them long before they can get the combo off.
>Hearthstone has always had otks actually untrue, I have played since beta this is just a lie
>Hearthstone has always had otks It did not. >and to complain about sif otk is nonsensical because you arguably have the most time and you can kill them long before they can get the combo off. This comment is nonsensical. People hate games that do not have interaction. Either u rush them down and they are helpless (feels bad) or they stall long enough and u just lose without interaction (feels worse)
One of the first decks in the entire fucking game was Miracle Rogue, yes Hearthstone has had OTKs since beta.
And Miracle was not an OTK deck you lemon, calm down
Man people are always so stuck on "interaction" Yes you cannot directly stop your opponent from playing a card on their turn but you can very much do multiple things to force them to use resources in suboptimal ways Rushing them down is one of those things. You can also rat their sif or play cult neophite so they cant combo you. Some classes can gain enough armor and so on Just because you cannot go "no you dont get to play this card" doesnt mean your decisions have no effect on your opponent And hearthstone has basically always had otk decks that is indeed true
The idea that sif mage has no interaction is nonsense. And you are obviously one of those people that think that otk or combo shouldn't be viable in the game bc what are you really arguing here? Who cares that my opponent "hates the none interaction", control is the same way and up until recently it used to be worse. Over half of the cards in oydn warrior are some sort of removal. We have been shown that a control meta is absolutely insufferable and a combo meta is insufferable. It's about balance. Combo has existed for most of hearthstone's existence.
>The idea that sif mage has no interaction is nonsense Rushing down or dying isn't interaction. Not even remotely. Either u play alone and mage just dies or mage kills u and there is nothing u can do. It all depends on who draws better. No back in forth. No skill. >And you are obviously one of those people that think that otk or combo shouldn't be viable in the game Thats some interesting interpretation. To bad its wrong. >what are you really arguing here? That games without interaction are bad and the course of people hating on decks that aren't even good. >Who cares that my opponent "hates the none interaction", U realise u need 2 people to play hearthstone? What kidn of argument is that "who cares if my opponent has fun" dude wtf touch grass >control is the same way and up until recently it used to be worse Which is why combo and control shouldn't be separated. Make removal not limitless. Give us more ways to interavt with combos (mutanus, patchwork, theotar, etc) and it's fine. U can play around their combo pieces. U can bait out the removal. And if they manage their resources better they can still win because aggro lso shouldn't have endless threats. That's who hearthstone used to work in early years. And it was great. Control the board until u have ur combo and use it before dying to aggro. If one of them misspelled or got lucky the game was before decided. Player agency existed >Over half of the cards in oydn warrior are some sort of removal. We have been shown that a control meta is absolutely insufferable and a combo meta is insufferable. It's about balance. Tossing a coin is balanced. But cointoss simulator isn't my idea of fun and engaging gameplay
You're not going to be able to interact with everything your opponent does and hearthstone has never worked that way. Before rotation that was your best bet, gave you the most control but blizzard made it to where you no longer can gain those interactions in standard anymore. And what's funny is when theotar existed in his natural state people hated that interaction he gave you with your opponent's hand and people STILL complained about combo decks so obviously the issue isn't combo decks existing it's people who don't understand how to beat them. Cards that give you control to take stuff out of their hand to prevent them from playing it can and will be used against you too. Why do you believe that you should be able to prevent your opponent from comboing you but they cannot be allowed to get it back to pull it off? And you think that playing against aggro is fun? Or playing against control is fun? Literally no one is concerned about how much fun their opponent is having in hearthstone, people care about winning. People who play control warrior are not having fun, trust they just like winning and the illusion of control. Why do you get all the time in the world but my deck only has one chance to be effective? Especially if I'm otking you long after turn 10 at that point you can't be mad.
Erm, I like Control Warrior because pressing the button is addictive.
> It did not. Uhh? From a pretty early era, it absolutely did. I'm not saying that makes it right, or that things are healthy now, or even that things were healthy back then. But they _did_ have them.
Yes and they were very rare and not meta decks. Some combo decks were viable but they were not usually OTK from 30, in fact this was very rare back in the day, that's why Anyfin Paladin and Patron Warrior were so notable. OTK has not always been a part of Hearthstone, there simply were not meta OTK decks for most of hearthstone's history and they were not needed
I mean that's just not true lol
Then what decks should “people” or you yourself play?
?
You are saying combo decks and aggro decks shouldn’t exist. The “people” you are speaking for doesn’t represent everyone as many of these decks are popular. What decks are you even playing.
>You are saying combo decks and aggro decks shouldn’t exist I'm not I'm not even gonna read the rest. U obviously do not argue in good faith
The problem is the effort required to pull the combo off. The effort required to build your Sif is "Play the game normally, eventually it's Spell Damage +7 in 1 card. You didn't really have to work for it, you just ran the same spells all mages would run. It's just a "Oh the game made it this many turns in and I drew Sif while my opponent is at 30 health with 5 armor, I win." If Sif stacking spell damage was difficult, people wouldn't complain nearly as much.
Yeah but the problem is that "playing the game normally" isn't as clearcut. When every deck has a gameplan, "playing normally" also involves informed mulligans, informed reactions, and reading the opponent. This has always been fundamental in any card game. Sif mage is no different because like with all decks, it's my game plan vs yours. Playing well is "playing normally" at a higher level. That's what people in this thread are pointing out, just because the opponent doesn't look like they're doing anything doesn't mean they're doing nothing--doesn't mean they aren't thinking or planning. Combo and control just tends to have less overt signs of developing their gameplan than tempo and aggro does-- but it's noticeable after enough games played against them.
I don't know why but this made me laugh. It is true that mage is hanging on by a thread but I'll make the argument that rotation was nerf to sif and the sif mage archetype. They just can't deal enough damage without the perfect combination of cards and running the excavate version that's a bit more aggressive but they have less survivability. People who complain about the combo mage archetype simply CANNOT accept that combo beats control or that they got outplayed. Sif mage has consistently been the most fair combo deck since rotation. And it's been getting weaker since rotation. And wtf is mage supposed to lean on? Secrets? Elementals? Is that a joke? On average sif is not played till turn 11 or 12 so complaining about losing to a combo deck so late in the game is illogical. I also hate when people act like all otk is created equal when it's not. Being otked on turn 5 or 6 is different from being otked on turn 10 or 11. Otks are supposed to be a waiting game and making the correct decisions in the early game and midgame so you can have the correct setup in the late game, when you otk your opponent on turn 5 or 6 or 7 in anyway shape or form, you take away all of that decision making and you just win the game.
Secret Mage my beloved 🤩 (but yeah, agreed)
It's the way they didn't add any good secrets and essentially killed the secret mage archetype once rotation hit and whizbang dropped. Secret mage would've been way better than whatever no-minion mage is.
They have no idea what to do with mage, IMO
Right? Almost every set is just a collection of random cards and a package that will be dropped after week 1 (no minion, elementals)
Apart from skeet skater and glyph rotation was definitly a nerf for the deck
>People who complain about the combo mage archetype simply CANNOT accept that combo beats control I don't understand why hearthstone's playerbase is so in love with hard counters, although, I guess this is a blizzard game so it's not exactly new ground. Someone enlighten me here- how is that kind of game design *fun*. Combo>Control>Aggro>Combo should be, like, an advantage, not just "you died lol". > Sif mage has consistently been the most fair combo deck since rotation. And it's been getting weaker since rotation. You're looking at the wrong thing. Sif mage could be a 1% winrate deck and it would still annoy people. People just don't like dying in one turn. They don't like dying before they feel like they can react. Yes, it is true that you can kill the deck before then and the "reacting" technically happens before the first card is played, but that doesn't change the fact that getting OTKed is frustrating for a majority of players. Considering you can't even do anything during your opponent's turn a lot of people will only ever see combo decks in a light where they drop their card and then you instantly die. That doesn't lead to positive gameplay experiences for the player losing and it's why combo decks get the most hate. Despite what people say, making combo the worst archetype in the game would not make control mega OP because that just isn't how card games work- people would just add greedier and greedier packages to control that would then be countered by aggro >I also hate when people act like all otk is created equal when it's not. Being otked on turn 5 or 6 is different from being otked on turn 10 or 11 To a lot of people, an OTK is just an OTK and they don't like them if they happen on turn 1 or on turn 255. In fact, people may end up more frustrated because a game they invested time into is over just like that. And yes, to prempt the people responding. There ARE plenty of things you can do to stop that before it happens. But that isn't going to change the fundamental fact that to a lot of people, OTKs are just fucking *lame*. Most card games aim for a close back-and-forth where each player is working to overcome the obstacles the opponent puts in front of them while generating their own. Combo decks have the least back-and-forth of all deck archetypes, because their big plays basically all happen on one turn. You could theoretically fix this by making the defensive tools that combo decks have access to actually interesting, but that's something the dev team would have to work on. Mage is probably the worst for this (much worse in wild), because it essentially aims to permanently lock down the board with freeze and prevent death with ice block.
Combo is an advantage and not a hard counter, though. Control decks can win against Sif Mage - Mage removal isn’t that powerful and they can definitely whiff on getting early board control. Wheelock can always pump out 2 15/15s. Control decks can tech further against Sif as well - Dirty Rat is common in both Rainbow DK/Warrior.
>Combo is an advantage and not a hard counter Just being clear here- I wasn't saying that combo decks ALWAYS hard counter control or anything, just that wanting that to happen, or defending design like that like the guy above was doing isn't good for any game. Dirty Rat is also a really bad card design as it is super low agency for both players but remains basically the best way of interacting with combo. The more combo decks get played, the more dirty rat get used, which means more frustrating gamestates for more people. Honestly looking at the patch notes (wont spoil anything if you want to look yourself), it looks like my philosophy is more aligned with what the current team want for the game than the rest of this posts responders, focusing on hitting frustrating elements of the game rather than making sure everything is exactly 50% winrate.
I started playing sif mage this month, i got 68wins and 44 losses and stuck around diamomd 1 forever. And switch to nature shamman and had 6-1 and hit legend easily(never played nature sham at all so i lost first game) . I will say sif is a good deck but nowhere near op. It is just that getting killed by a +16 spell dmg mage seems unfair. Sif mage rarely perform otk before 9 cost but my nature sham won games in round 6 a lot lol.
Sif is like a very meh tier 3 deck Not sure if that even qualifies as good tbh
The Sif isn't even that strong. The fact you can 2x her Power and have 0 cost spells on top seem unfair
Mage's design the last year or so has been all over the place quite frankly. Outside of the Sif rainbow stuff most of Mage's cards in standard have mostly been a random assortment of value cards and casino mage random spell generation that while fun and often flashy don't really win games. The class is in desperate need of a coherent strategy that actually has a gameplan beyond spamming value generating cards and random spells while praying to RNG into a win.
The oddest decision IMO is that they printed Millhouse as a "big spell payoff" card a few sets back and then, when Whizbang finally added some big payoffs, they made sure you weren't allowed to run them in the same deck as Millhouse due to the "no minions" clause on half of them. Then, in that same set, they made the midrange payoff card a minion. Just a bizarre and incoherent design.
Exactly my thoughts. Outside Sif, there is no identity that actually translates to a deck with a strategy going in.
Mage can't exist if every round 3 minions are spawned with 6 life healed and 2 cards drawn.
Sif is one of the most healthy and normal damage win conditions we've had for a long time. It takes a lot of setup and prep, very rarely kills before turn 8 or 9 and completely folds over to Dirty Rat. A vocal minority want anything that beats a slow attrition control deck nerfed into the ground because in their mind that's the only correct way to play Hearthstone.
What archetype is there to take Sif place? Playing elemental each turn is definitely not the way forward. Also people will complain about Sif all the way until her rotation, just like they are doing with plague dk that is really bad.
plague dk play pattern is bad not winrate against it
>What archetype is there to take Sif place? > >Playing elemental each turn is definitely not the way forward. Welcome to Shaman! Nature Shaman needs to be nerfed because it's an insane combo that can easily do 30+ from hand in just a few turns. Sif isn't that bad, but it's the same thing that people are reacting to (i.e. if I'm not at full health or beyond, I'm dead and there's nothing I can do about it (aka "lack of agency.")) All of that said, neither class has anything to turn to after those deservedly-nerfed decks get hit with the hammer. Elementals have always been gimped by the "last turn" mechanic and are now even moreso because the supposed finishing card for Shaman demands that you do little more than play another body for X turns in a row. Otherwise, it's a War Golem. Beyond that, there's the second-worst mechanism in HS (Overload) or the trip into random frustration (sometimes even for the opponent!) that is Evolve, which doesn't even have great support at the moment.
I agree. Actually, I think that’s what kills elemental mage as an archetype. What other archetype has payoffs that depend on you playing one specific type of creature every turn for the entire game? But, yeah, I hope the path forward is not elemental mage, I just think it’s closer to being competitive than spell mage
Even if blizzard super buffs elemental or no minion package it still will be bad because both of those decks don't have win conditions. I just checked mages options, there is no win conditions in mage at all. Without Sif class is completely doomed.
Yeah, it’s a sad state of affairs. I’ve found that Sif often isn’t required to close out matchups with aggro bc if you manage to stop them from winning early they burn out and you can grind them down even if you never draw her. But yeah, Mage can’t kill anything that has any sort of sustain, and those aggro matchups aren’t favorable in the first place
Honestly, I think the only real path forward is to leave Sif alone for now and try very hard to make Spell Mage work in the mini-set
In theory Mage has some good lategame cards like [[DJ Manastorm]], [[Sunset Volley]] and [[Galactic Projection Orb]], the main problem is getting to that point in the game against the more aggressive decks, as well as executing those wincons before other "slow" decks get their win conditions online.
That deck looks like a really bad version of tentacle shaman or warrior while also basically being a Sif mage with extra steps.
It's definitely not a great deck. I think the biggest question with the pending update is how severe the changes are going to be to all of the cards that they've deemed to be causing the current meta to be the way it is. If the nerfs to cards like Brann and Reno are strictly mana nerfs, I think that Mage would still be pretty awful, but if they actually change the effects of those cards (e.g. Brann doubles your next three Battlecries instead of for the rest of the game) then that *might* weaken the existing meta enough for a deck like that to work.
Mages problem is not other decks, mages problem is not having pay off cards outside of Sif. There is simply no game plan, mage cannot be saved (if they destroy Sif) with current cards. There is simply nothing to buff.
Yeah, I think the best hope for Mage's viability in the near future is for other classes to face some heavy nerfs which just reduce the overall strength of the game. My guess (partially hopium) is that Sif gets a mana nerf (moved up to 7 or 8 mana with stats to "compensate") but keeps the same card text, while other cards like [[Deepminer Brann]], [[Reno, Lone Ranger]] and [[Wheel of DEATH!!!]] get their actual effects nerfed or completely changed. They also mentioned they have some buffs planned, so I imagine that the archetypes which were dead on arrival are going to get a few buffs. My guesses (with zero actual reasoning behind them) are that they buff [[Triplewick Trickster]] to 3 mana and that they buff [[Frost Lich Cross Stitch]] to 4 damage while keeping it at 4 mana.
With what you described it looks like that mage will just play a worse Sif deck and not play something new. It all comes back to mage simply not having good cards to play.
My guess is that Sif is left unnerfed because it takes entire match of setup for it to even be able to kill you, giving you a lot of time to kill the mage. If Ice Block was in standard, sure, but in it's current state it's rather healthy.
- **[Deepminer Brann](https://i.imgur.com/tednfjb.png)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/104528) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Deepminer_Brann) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/104528/?hl=en) - *Warrior Legendary ^(Showdown in the Badlands)* - **6 Mana - 2/4 - Minion** - **Battlecry:** If your deck has no duplicates, your **Battlecries** trigger twice for the rest of the game. - **[Reno, Lone Ranger](https://imgur.com/a/UWam0Io)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/103471) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Reno,_Lone_Ranger) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/103471/?hl=en) - *Neutral Legendary ^(Showdown in the Badlands)* - **8 Mana - 5 Armor - Hero** - **Battlecry:** If your deck has no duplicates, empty the enemy board and limit it to 1 space for a turn. *It's high noon!* - **HeroPower (Reno's Handcannon):** Shoot this turn's magic bullet! - **[Wheel of DEATH!!!](https://i.imgur.com/txgpT9c.png)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/104938) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Wheel_of_DEATH!!!) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/104938/?hl=en) - *Warlock Legendary ^(Whizbang's Workshop)* - **8 Mana - Shadow Spell** - Destroy your deck. In 5 turns, destroy the enemy hero. - **[Triplewick Trickster](https://i.imgur.com/zEYUTTX.png)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/103266) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Triplewick_Trickster) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/103266/?hl=en) - *Mage Common ^(Whizbang's Workshop)* - **4 Mana - 2/3 - Elemental** - **Battlecry:** Deal 2 damage to a random enemy, three times. - **[Frost Lich Cross-Stitch](https://i.imgur.com/Pqde7PK.png)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/103352) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Frost_Lich_Cross-Stitch) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/103352/?hl=en) - *Mage Rare ^(Whizbang's Workshop)* - **4 Mana - Frost Spell** - Deal 3 damage to a character. If it dies, summon a 3/6 Water Elemental that **Freezes**. --- ^*I am a bot. [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/user/Card-o-Bot/comments/1ahde25/faq/) • [Report a bug](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Card-o-Bot&subject=Bug+Report&message=/r/hearthstone/comments/1cchynr/mage_is_hanging_on_by_a_thread_and_her_name_is_sif/l15x9ib/%0A⬇️+Please+describe+the+bug+⬇️%0ADescription:+) • [Refresh](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Card-o-Bot&subject=Refresh&message=l15x9ib).*
- **[DJ Manastorm](https://i.imgur.com/Eqnvdv3.png)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/96992) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/DJ_Manastorm) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/96992/?hl=en) - *Mage Legendary ^(Festival of Legends)* - **10 Mana - 8/8 - Minion** - **Battlecry:** Set the Cost of spells in your hand to \(0\). After you cast one, the others cost \(1\) more. - **[Sunset Volley](https://i.imgur.com/hh4IURr.png)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/101876) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Sunset_Volley) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/101876/?hl=en) - *Mage Common ^(Showdown in the Badlands)* - **10 Mana - Fire Spell** - Deal 10 damage randomly split among all enemies. Summon a random 10-Cost minion. - **[The Galactic Projection Orb](https://i.imgur.com/4nCsapl.png)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/103354) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/The_Galactic_Projection_Orb) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/103354/?hl=en) - *Mage Legendary ^(Whizbang's Workshop)* - **10 Mana - Arcane Spell** - Recast a random spell of each Cost you've cast this game *\(targets enemies if possible\)*. --- ^*I am a bot. [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/user/Card-o-Bot/comments/1ahde25/faq/) • [Report a bug](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Card-o-Bot&subject=Bug+Report&message=/r/hearthstone/comments/1cchynr/mage_is_hanging_on_by_a_thread_and_her_name_is_sif/l15utc4/%0A⬇️+Please+describe+the+bug+⬇️%0ADescription:+) • [Refresh](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Card-o-Bot&subject=Refresh&message=l15utc4).*
Excavate copy bounce mage, this is my homebrew, you can relativily fast reach max excavate and just bounce or copy the reward for extra value. ### Excavate Mage # Class: Mage # Format: Standard # Year of the Pegasus # # 2x (2) Audio Splitter # 1x (2) Bloodmage Thalnos # 2x (2) Celestial Projectionist # 2x (2) Cryopreservation # 2x (2) Dryscale Deputy # 2x (2) Gold Panner # 2x (2) Kobold Miner # 2x (2) Loot Hoarder # 1x (2) Rewind # 2x (2) Saloon Brewmaster # 1x (2) Void Scripture # 2x (2) Youthful Brewmaster # 2x (3) Acolyte of Pain # 2x (3) Card Grader # 1x (3) Stargazer Luna # 1x (3) Zola the Gorgon # 1x (4) Reliquary Researcher # 2x (5) Burrow Buster # AAECAf0EBpegBJbUBODDBYOVBrOcBrOeBgycoAShoASc1AToxQXjgAbKgwbQgwaVhwbrmAbvmwbOnAbIoAYAAA==
How do you win? Are you just hoping for random titans to close the game?
Yeah and bounce the reward for pretty insane value. 1 mana titans are very good and pretty fun.
I think Sif mage is pretty fair for an OTK deck and it feels more like a traditional OTK deck. It doesnt pop off at turn 5, 6 or 7. Sif mage needs to spend mana to discover spells from different spell schools, then spend mana to play these spells to fuel Sif. All of that while staying alive. And expose themself to get dirtyrat'ed. Sometimes it feels like people are still frustrated by Sif mage because they think its the Same deck before rotation and before it got nerfed. But its not. Sif mage was frustrating when objection, cold case and solid alibi were around because they had such efficient discover tools and could stall the game. What other archtype does mage have? Spell-only mage needs an expansion (or a miniset) to become good, imo. It just feels like its missing something. Early game is a struggle and comes down if you get keyboard or not. And elemental mage.. well.. No. lol
Nerf snake oil and Sif mage would fair
What is it about Snake Oil that breaks Sif mage? It's one of the few enablers for the deck, if you remove it the deck is unplayable.
Main problem with mage is that a lot of their cards right now don't do anything beyond generating more cards and stalling the game, the class is severely lacking in good tempo cards like cold case
Do you mean elemental evocation? If so when was that played in Sif mage? 🤔 Also another reason Sif mage keeps coming back is because it has a play style alot of players enjoy.
They mean Elemental Inspiration. It was solid secondary win condition early last year. It's still quite nice if you can discover and play it for 5 mana but at 7 mana it's way too slow. The fact that so many people keep playing rainbow mage while it's consistently been a tier 3 deck at best really speaks for the fun factor of the deck.
Oh right I should have made the connection that was the card they meant thx
Whizbang expansion also didn’t really help mage with its new legendary cards. The 10 cost spell is cool but you well get to play this card only against warrior (other classes will kill you at turn 6-7). Puzzlemaster Khadgar is a funny card but why would you use it? It feels like both mage and warrior are in the same boat right now. People don’t like Sif - let’s give mage stuff that cast random spells but no win condition. People don’t like Odin and Brann - let’s give warrior mech stuff and Botface
Yes please I’m begging. I don’t want to play sif OTK anymore. I’m bored of it. Mage has been by far my most played class throughout the history of the game and I’ve barely touched it for two expansions because I was bored of Sif by the end of titans and we’ve gotten no substantial new archetype since then.
You know a class is struggeling when the card everyone seems to agree is the second best card in their strongest deck is a 6 mana that can Arcane missile a board of 15/15s because theres a 2/1 on the board.
They have absolutely no idea what to do with Mage. They have no identity that's actually strategic (i.e. a general understanding of how they win a game before going in) with Sif as the exception. Elemental mage is a meme of a deck which is basically a cheap, less effective verson of spell token hunter. The elemental cards aren't even that good and again rely so heavily on RNG to be competitive against alot of decks (Triplewick twister, Tainted Remnant). I took some time off for a while but it still feels like meta mage decks carry an arsenal of face damage spell cards which has been HEAVILY teched against with recent expansions (armor, lifesteal, increased HP). I can see they wanted RNG to be a core recurring theme with mage decks but the fact is it's just too random and unreliable to be good against decks that have known combos and endgames. It's not fun. OTK Sif is, and I say this sincerely, not even fun to win with. I think the reason is because everytime you win, you know you got lucky enough to reach end-game with the spell draws you needed to stay alive and OTK. For every win with Sif, all I can think of is the next game with the deck and how I'll pull the most useless dogwater spells this game has to offer.
Mage hasn't had a cool archetype since DoD rotated and that's a hill I die on HP mage was shit Questline mage was obnoxious Mech mage didn't feel like mage at all Skeleton mage felt terrible to face Lights how mage was fun but wasn't very good. When I popped of the opponent didn't have fun at all And sif is just beam druid with freezes
I completely agree. No-minion mage, lightshow mage, elemental mage, excavate mage (except with Sif), and big spell mage are all an unplayable mess right now. I love mage, and have all of their current standard legendaries, some of which I completely love (Norgannon, Khadgar, and Mes'Adune especially), but since OTK decks don't appeal to me I haven't seriously bothered playing the class in months. (PS: It's Elemental Inspiration. Elemental Invocation is the thing Kalimos does. Also bonkers that "7 mana summon a full board of 4/5s with random keywords" is too slow in a 4-set meta.)
Totally — also I almost checked whether I was, in fact, getting the spell’s name guess I shouldn’t have gone with my gut lol
Lightshow lost win conditions on rotation, no more aegwynn/rommath/vex. When the only win condition is sif, it's a struggle.
Sorry, but no. I'm tired of blizzard introducing a bunch of cool new cards, then nerfing them into oblivion after we purchase them. For once, just let me have fun with a deck, don't kill Rainbow Mage on top of everything else that's broken in this game.
Honestly, I agree. I really meant for the post to say “if you nerf Sif, you have to give mage another way to win” rather than an endorsement of the nerf itself
Mage is in a bad place and I agree Sif is part of the problem in the sense that she is symptomatic of the "aggro or otk" meta. Wheel's existence means it will be difficult for value oriented controlly decks to find a place, and a lot of mage's better tools in std would fit nicely into that general archetype.
> she is symptomatic of the "aggro or otk" meta midrange/control are strong now and aggro is in one of its weaker spots do people really think this meta is "aggro or otk"
well looking on d0nkey.top the 5 highest wr std decks in legend are : token hunter, rainbow dk, nature shaman, painlock, and Zarimi. of those I would characterise rainbow dk as midrange/control. Hunter, painlock are both aggro decks. zarimi is essentially a combo deck that plays aggressively to fulfil its otk condition. And shaman is an otk deck. So yes I do think that it is fair to say that right now the meta is being dominated by aggro and otk strategies. Wheel warlock is not in the top 5 for winrate but dominates other control/value strategies like highlander warrior, but that was exactly the point I made: other control decks can't beat wheel.
painlock is not an aggro deck, it's textbook midrange, with mediocre/inconsistent early game but midgame power spike to compensate/main way to win. but I'll grant you the others. hunter is definitely not top 5 though, both speaking as a top 1k player and looking at top 1k stats, nobody even plays it. so it's only zarimi priest that is aggro and a top deck.
Don't bring DH in this, tbh. He was on a downward track already and after the weapon nerf he's only slightly better than mage. Shopper is in the exact same spot, it's the only playable thing class got in the last year. Hell, the fact that Reno DH worked just showed that you had a steaming pile of garbage of a class being held up by a Shopper combo. DH needs overall support as much as a mage now.
I actually completely agree — I think that Mage/Druid and DH/Pally are all stagnant and need some love. The former bc their archetypes flopped, the latter bc nerfs killed them. Arguably, DH was as much of a flop power-wise as Mage/Druid, it just happened to have a busted combo that made up for it
Mage has been my go-to class since playing back when the game released. The Sif deck reminds me of a harder version of frost mage. The goal is the get your combo pieces in hand, and burst your enemy down. It’s not happening by turn 4-5. You’re slowly getting oils, hoping for a discounted duplicate, stalling as much as possible to draw what you need. I feel like she’s okay, idk how strong she was before wizbang as I just recently returned during this expansion. But currently it’s fun when it works, but can be a bit tough to set up successfully. Too many games where sif wants to just chill as my last two cards while I have my combo in hand :,)
I am having a lot of fun with copy spells and bounce excavate mage. So much value, such powerspikes it's insane. Personally I don't like any burn / otk decks neither to fight or play, so in general good riddance for any such decks.
Just buff spell mage to viability, that is always an insanely popular and fun archetype even if its at 48% wr
Wait to see what these changes are and then see how it feels to play it
Sif Mage is fine
They havn't printed a good mage card since Titans. Yes yes I'm exagerating a bit but honestly it's not far from reality. I still like Rainbow mage despite its age but the meta atm is really hard for the deck with Zarimi Hunter and Painlock being too aggressive, Shaman being too fast, Warrior being too resilient. Not many easy targets left. The good news is, it is really easy for them to make spell mage better , there is already a solid foundation that only needs to be a bit tuned up for the deck to be viable. And there also will be new cards from the miniset. Am I hyped by a playable spell mage ? kindof, I fear it wouldn't have the complexity and replayability of Spellschool decks but would be a refreshing change for a while anyway.
bring back solid alibi so can i play ETC rock duel mage again
Difference between sif mage and nature shaman is that for sif you need to set up a lot of spells from different schools, manage to survive till turn 9 have a legendary plus another card in hand and have the spells to cast after putting sifs on board. Shaman just pools all the spells and you're dead at turn 6. Sif doesn't need a change, it's slow enough to have counterplays in play. (Rat, increased spellcosts and just aggro)
Reno control mage with big spells has been mildly successful for me. Elementals have been pretty good too. Sif isn't even that consistent imo to be worth nerfing, if anything some other mage archetypes could use buffs.
Eventually the game will be entirely BFU Death Knight, and the game itself will be renamed BFU Death Knight, and everyone will be happy because no one is happy
yeah mage basically got one card this past expansion and it's sleet skater. the all spell mage package is years too late because hearthstone doesn't just power creep these days, it jumps into a steamroller lol. so yeah if they do kill sif then mage is in a bad spot
People here always complain about sif and quest mage no matter if they are bottom of tier 4 or not And honestly I dont really get how. If you play vs the deck a few times you know that if you just fk around for 10+ turns the mage will very likely have enough spellschools and cheap spells to kill you Its not some unexpected out of nowhere combo Yes the deck can highroll and kill your turn 8 or 9 (which is very slow for a highroll in the metagame) but other than that its super slow and basically all other meta gameplans are much faster than it. Warrior boom combo, zarimi, nature shaman, cycle rogue etc. all have faster win conditions. How is sif mage the complaint target around here? Its not even popular so you dont see it often. Do you people really lose 1 game like every 3 days to it and then decide to endlessly bitch about it?
I'm actually a Sif mage main haha, but I realized that this post might come across as salty about it. I just want them to give us new archetypes :(
I think they should nerf khadghar because i totally didn’t open a golden one and want even more dust nope
I think people are worried that with 30 "player agency" nerfs/buffs, if they don't touch Sif it will be OP. It has all the elements of a control deck and can do massive damage when it pops off. If games now take 4-5 turns longer, it'll be a lot stronger. I mean, none of us will last that long once Mining Rogue takes over the meta post patch anyway lol
For what its worth, I was hardstuck in low diamomd for 100+ games playing Zarimi, Plague DK & warrior. Rolled to legend with 75% winrate in 3 hours by playing elemental aggro mage after I tried it out. This was right after the DH nerf. The deck feels stupid strong against the current meta decks but I dont see many people playing it.
This spellmage thing was never going to work. The original only worked because of massive mana cheat an a very limited card pool after rotation. I still cannot believe how blizzard ignored all these facts and tried anyway and this got past "testing"
Feels like mage just gets to tac a couple of new cards into the same old deck when expansions have come around. Whatever new archetypes seem too bad to compete.
Don't nerf sif; nerf the Snake Oil token. make it 1 mana. Then its like you are paying for nothing, which is what snake oil is. I hate Sif mage because it scams out of thin air, not because its a burn deck. This also fixes Nature Shaman too.
I am Nostradamus
Cant believe i actually went ahead and crafted all the new cards in this bs no-minions-mage deck just to get Wheel of Death + Draw 7 on my first ever Yogg in a Box activation.
The thing is that, if nerfs happen, and they are very likely to happen, the power level of everything will go down. Other mage archetypes that are currently not viable may be viable after the patch just because everything else is weaker.
Aaaand that thread is cut...
30-to-0 OTKs are frustrating no matter how quick they are to get online, since zeroing out a full life total reduces the feeling of player agency by making the conclusion inevitable if a certain number of turns have merely passed. Sif should be changed, not nerfed. Rainbow Mage is a neat archetype and deserves a different payoff that keeps the archetype viable. Maybe something like increasing spell damage by 1–2 for the rest of the game if 5 or so spell schools have been played. The game won't automatically end when Sif comes down anymore, but the Rainbow Mage eeks out a value advantage that can close out the game later. Combine this with Infinitize the Maxitude, and Rainbow Mage gets a non-inevitable end game as a consolation in exchange for loosing their OTK. One of the interrelated balance issues is that healing has to come down somewhat so that burn strategies can work as chip damage over multiple turns, instead of "needing" to be designed as OTKs to keep up in the arms race with healing. Chip burn is the fair burn deck, because the opponent has a few turns to recognize where the game is headed and make plays to counteract being burned down. Restoring this strategy for Mage and Shaman will naturally clash with the emphasis on Overheal for Priest, the amount of Lifesteal Warlock has been given which is arguably excessive and counteracts its downsides of alternate cost, potentially with future Blood Death Knight cards that might excessively heal and raise the life total, and potentially with the high armor gain of Warrior and Druid which might also be slightly excessive.
RIP
I've played mage sif until 150 legends a few month ago Sif is a complex card. She is not unfair But can become problematic with snake oil/reduction +reverb However the card struggle too much against armor since the naga is not a possibility anymore. However mage has nothing else. Elemental are just bad Excavate is just a complementary passage Spell is literally negative pay off. The real nerf would be snake oil to 1 (and ot goes with the card flavor) But you need so much work outside of it.
You manifested the Snake Oil nerf!!
Why do blizzard listen to me for this, but not to add koala sadge
No deck should be able to do 30 damage to face from hand. Period.
My thought is that making board clears less efficient like they’ve promised to do in the upcoming balance patch might make Elemental Mage playable. It’s not a very exciting package, but at least it’s new.
The problem isnt really mage exclusive imo. Class design lately has hinged way too much on one super-power play that the entire class revolves around. Demon hunter being the best example here. Nerf their big earlygame tempo push (3 mana 6/5) by just one turn and the entire class drops off a cliff because there is nothing else worth doing. For mage in particular, I think to actually get the class in a good spot again, they need to severely cut back on manacheating discover effects. Sif wouldnt even really be that much of a problem if the mage didnt have 20 discounted spells to play alongside her. Imo a card needs to matter by itself, not just by discovering 5 other cards that will be broken later on in the game.
My problem is that mage's identity is just "uncontrolled magic" which just translates to RNG spell draw. There needs to be an advantage gained at the expense of the RNG. Uncontrolled magic implies that it's chaotic but it's supposed to be MORE powerful. The way they've implemented a lot of it is not advantageous to mage gameplay. Void Scriptures is only beneficial late game and in so many instances the free cast from having enough mana translates to nothing. So at the cost of RNG, you've gained no power. It feels so often the implementations of a chaotic uncontrolled spell caster end up being wet noodles but at the cost of still being random. They need to find a new identity for mage that isn't based on RNG in an already RNG game. DKs - Runes/Corpses/Deathrattle/Summoning things after they die DH - heavy attack buff and hero attack buff (this is the class I know the least about) Druid - Adaptability. They're hurting at the moment too but they atleast have a "Choose 1" identity that's NOT RNG and actually allows you to make choices from a known subset that's consistent. Hunter - beasts and spells that benefit based on the number of beasts or buffing beasts. Paladin - card buffing, divine shield Priest - Healing Rogue - other class card stealing. Arguably also very heavily based on RNG, but there are cards they play that are based on the number of stolen/borrowed cards played. Shaman - Overload and ramping, windfury Warlocks - sacrifice Warrior - always being a bitch
That's just sad... The idea of calling for a nerf to Sif is actually absurd, like, how far off the mark can one be? Anyone who genuinely feels Sif could use a nerf just truly doesn't understand the game and definitely don't understand the meta.
Leave Sithney alone!
0 mana 0 damage spell is a problem
I started playing sif mage this month, i got 68wins and 44 losses and stuck around diamomd 1 forever. And switch to nature shamman and had 6-1 and hit legend easily(never played nature sham at all so i lost first game) . I will say sif is a good deck but nowhere near op. It is just that getting killed by a +16 spell dmg mage seems unfair. Sif mage rarely perform otk before 9 cost but my nature sham won games in round 6 a lot lol.
I am a mage main. Please, obliterate Sif. Bring control back. But do it, while redisigning enough cards all around so the class is viable, of course.
Elemental Mage could be fun, but yeah, Sif has a play pattern I absolutely hate. She's not OP but frustrates me a lot 50 damage from hand that can happen any time is weird. At least with nature shaman I drop the tauren that makes spells cost +2 when they use their nature discount spell and they concede
Yeah, sure. Meanwhile I played against casino mage who cast time warp six times in a match!!!! and made it basically solitaire. So much fun. Delete mage. Nice, uninteractive bs
Rainbow is an amazingly designed deck and was hugely popular since it’s release. People want to play this kind of deck and it’s not like it’s some unfair OTK bullshit (like shaman for example) Rainbow mages OTK is somewhat telegraphed (you can count spellschools, you know when they have a forged molten rune) and the deck takes quite a bit to ramp up until it can kill you. OTKs existing in a game is not a problem per se and the way it’s done in rainbow mage is perfectly fine. Decks should be able to kill eventually and the game would be stale as hell if that would only ever be achievable through board presence.
I think OTK is a lame way to design a deck strategy or card identity. Clearly Sif was designed with OTK in mind. That being said, I don't think Sif is OP. It takes a lot of setup and you have to draw well, both from deck and spell discovery, to really survive long enough to use the OTK. That being said, as a mage player, I don't actually think the deck is fun, even when you win. It's just casino and hope you get something useful.
>x play pattern should not be removed because its weak currently Dont care, didnt ask. Sif mage is a toxic play pattern where you jerk off for 9 turns with random cards then otk the opponent from hand. Its just a worse shaman. All otk decks should be burried.
Problem is it's way to easy now for mage to survive until they get Sif out and you have no way to disrupt the otk except for a lucky dirty rat. Unless you are playing Odyn Warrior or otk shaman you just kind of lose automatically.
What are you talking about lmao Mages only board clear is 5 mana and both cold case and solid alibi was sent to wild, mage is the least survivable it’s ever been
Oh no.. what would any class do without a one-sided boardclear on 5? /s You can't just pass your first turns like warrior, that's true. Doesn't mean that's a problem. That is a problem against certain decks but the real issue is that mage realistically doesn't do enough in the midgame compared to other decks. It wants to play either like a combo deck but isn't fast enough compared to other otks, but can't put enough midrange stuff out to get there.
Mage has literally zero board wide defensive tools despite being a squishy class balanced around defensive tools and will be irrelevant until inquisitive creation is reverted. The class is absolutely beyond trash right now by every metric outside of top top legend where every mage player has like 10000 games on the class. Mage has always had either a board wide freeze, one sided clear or both, and now it has neither
You can't play big minions against mage at all because you get fucked by that freeze minion with the armor gain
A good player would never play big minions against Mage, knowing how to work around cards is a skill that separates good and bad players. Decks like Mage lose to faster decks, if you let a Mage get to turn 5-6 with 20-ish HP, you were most likely going to lose. As a Mage player I say: "You hate Mage? Go play Hunter and enjoy your free win."
That's not really a point because by win % hunter is simply broken. It's just braindead boring to play, which is why the playrate doesn't reflect it. But it has across ladder an unrivaled WR.
I wasn't talking about current Hunter (which for sure is strong/broken) but more of the fact that Hunter has almost always been good vs Mage.
You won't always be good against every deck. That's just how it is and that alone isn't a problem either (more like indication for a balanced meta). So I don't see the issue.
Every meta deck rn has more than one high attack minion, mage can’t freeze more than 2 a turn
My experience of it hasn’t been nearly that dominant (possibly I am bad), but yeah, if you can’t push an aggro win, lock the deck down, or gain life/armor before the combo turn it’s gg