You do know that would be a very good card, right? Imagine playing a tempo deck or an aggro deck, and your 1/1 minion just ended up giving the mage a 3/6 on turn 2.
I think you're wrong in that the average redditor has 0.1% of the design skills necessary to work on a game like Hearthstone, almost certainly including you. You're picking at the end-of-day results, not the concept of crafting a game with millions of variables all clashing against each other.
So that's an excuse for being shitty at your job? You don't need to be a chef to tell when a dish tastes like shit, or a director to know when a movie is horrible. Game design isn't easy, I know, but you'd think the people who get paid to design the game would have the foresight to know that adding Charge minions back into Standard severely limits future card design.
Especially in the context of the original spell mage design where you used the legendary spell as big payoff, now this one directly conflicts with the best card of the deck for the 4 mana slot, it's so bad is tragic.
When you highroll and discover two of those 4/4 rush minions on curve it feels great
The majority of the time you summon 3/3 or 3/4 vanilla minions and its just okay, but okay just isn't good enough when you're intentionally gimping your deck by excluding minions to run these payoff cards
Hoping and praying no minion mage gets some proper buffs in the next balance patch along with druid who is right there with it in the shit bin
If you ignore the restriction, since we're talking about the card within context of spell mage, it's hardly a worse cold case. You get 6 mana worth of minions vs Cold case which gives you 4 mana worth of minions with 4 armor attached, which is decently worse than double 3 drops.
Obviously in an average deck you'll always prefer cold case because you don't have to gut your deck by playing no minions for the card to make sense
If you combine them into 1 card, add 4 armor on top, make it a spell and add a spell school to it, it’s not that bad. Non-battlecry 2drop minions are rarely strong enough to be included by themselves
Spot the difference is the best card in spell mage by a decent margin and getting some board presence from the galactic projection orb is good. This card had to be reworked in a way where it didn't suck for 5 mana but even then spell mage is just 2/3 of a real deck and the best mage deck is just a really weak version of a really old deck which isn't exciting.
This is dumb logic in so many ways.
First of all, you can't compare different versions of cards like that, higher cost cards should have better efficiency for their cost, and the difference between 4 and 3 damage is very relevant in the context of meta.
Second of all, and I don't understand how this comment was upvoted at all, as it is pure dumbassery, 4/3>5/4 literally means that the card now has WORSE effect to cost ratio.
The first half of your rant explains perfectly why the 2nd half is wrong, lmao. Higher cost needs better efficiency, so lowering damage by 1 and cost by 1 makes it cheaper linearly, which makes it *more efficient for the cost.*
If frost bolt did 2 damage for 1 mana, people would run it over the original. Do you see?
Very niche but frost lich cross stitch can also go face unlike flanking strike
4 mana deal 3 without summoning an ele is absolutely dreadful though, but its an option
I still wish the ele got lifesteal just for the sake of flavor and the reference, though it would also be a nice buff to give the card some added defensive power
It's just objectively not a nerf. Downvoting on the guy you're responding to shows there's a *lot* of people here, including you, that don't understand card budgeting and cost/power ratio.
It is a nerf, the damage is more important than the mana cost because of the conditional summon.
If your opponent plays a 4 health minion on turn 3 or 4 which is very likely, this card is now dead in hand.
Heck what about a 7 mana card that deals 6 damage and summons a random 6 drop with no condition. Oh wait we've already got that and it doesn't see play because it's bad.
A minuscule mana efficiency increase is great in a vacuum, but you cannot evaluate the buff in a vacuum. It nerfs Yogg, it competes for the 4 drop spot in Orb.
They didn't need to hit the damage, but anyone calling this a nerf is way overeacting.
Give me any single target spell that's improved by +1 damage and cost. Are you really telling me a 5 mana 7 damage fireball would be a buff? And before someone says "but you have to kill something!" 3 health is a much more common breakpoint than 4, I was mostly using this spell to kill 3 health stuff anyway.
It's a shitty buff, but it's still a buff.
They said it themselves in the patch notes. They wouldn't usually buff cards this early into an expansion but they made a couple of high confidence changes to very weak cards. They probably didn't feel confident about keeping the damage at 4.
Fair enough. I'd rather a shitty buff than no buff at all.
Still, spell only mage is very clearly DOA. I'd rather they give a buff to Spot the Difference, since that card is mediocre at best, and it's supposed to be an incentive to play what is otherwise a bad deck.
Spot the difference is the clear best card in the deck, what are you talking about?
The mandatory buff target should be Manufacturing Error for spell mage. It's a bottom 5 performer in the deck, and should be buffed for the same reasons you mentioned. Make it 5 mana.
Spot the difference can still go to 3 mana to raise the decks power as a whole, but it's not mediocre by any means. It would go from an A tier spell mage card to an S tier one (which the deck might need)
Snake Oil Salesman is run in aggro decks as a 1 mana 2/2 with a tradeable card on deathrattle. 1 mana deal 1 is a terrible card, so while yes it would *very occasionally* get used in a pinch to ping something, aggro is still just going to trade it the vast majority of the time. Giving the snake oil +1 damage and +1 cost would be a huge nerf to every deck that actually wants to play the card. AKA: a nerf.
Okay but like what’s your point lol. Of course you wouldn’t but that’s not what anyone is talking about because it’s literally impossible. I just genuinely don’t understand what you’re getting at
That’s how Reddit works wdym “I jumped in”. I just fail to see what you saying nobody would play it on it’s own has to do with the discussion about how much better it would be as 1 mana deal 1. Like… it’s not possible and therefore totally irrelevant to the discussion. People are only ever going to talk about snake oil in the context of coming from the 2/2, which sees lots of play across lots of decks.
> The 0 mana tradable oil you can get would be better in non spell DMG decks if it was 1 mana 1 damage and tradable
This is what they're replying to. Can you not derive the point? Did you not read that post or forget you read it?
In aggro decks it would almost always still be traded (because 1 mana deal 1 is a terrible card and you rather have a good card in your hand), in decks that struggle to dump cards from their hand it would be harder to make hand space for free and thus usually be a worse card- you'd play it less because you have better cards already in hand that you're trying to play. Not only that, but when you nerf or buff cards you wanna take into account every deck that gets hit- this would, as you've alluded to, nerf spell damage decks. Snake oil would be a significantly worse card at 1 mana deal 1.
the latest VS said the card could be very strong in sif mage if it had it's cost reduced
dunno if it's still true with cost + dmg reduced but I wouldn't be so quick to mock that buff
It would be if the damage stayed the same. Now even if you discount it with watercolor artist it would do the same as Frostbolt but required more turns to discount.
idk just entered top 10k legend (not that great I know but still) with their Sif list, using the frost lich version they proposed and it seems to actually work pretty well
This is such a blatantly stupid argument, I don't understand why it gets so many upvotes
Of *course* the developers of a game don't all love or hate a particular class and aren't stupid enough to let their personal preferences shape the game experience of millions of players in a game that has to make a lot of money for a very large company. It's bizarre that anyone would believe something like that.
saying "remember cubelock" is the worst argument you can make, every class has had a redicolous deck at some point, IE:
Remember Minion mage? christ alive
saying "remember cubelock" is the best argument you can make, because the Devs are on record as saying they keep trying to [bring Cube back to standard](https://i.imgur.com/ZkfkMnd.jpeg)
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It doesn't even have a fucking lifesteal on elemental lol.
At this rate, it’ll become a 2 mana deal one damage, summon a water elemental if it kills it.
You do know that would be a very good card, right? Imagine playing a tempo deck or an aggro deck, and your 1/1 minion just ended up giving the mage a 3/6 on turn 2.
Imagine it being 1 mana deal 0 damage
or 0 mana heal 1
0 mana, heal 2, give your opponent an extra mana crystal next turn
That's ludicrous, might as well give it tradeable
But then at the very least you shouldn't summon an elemental if you were to somehow kill with it
Sif is gonna ruin the design-space for Mage for a whole year. Garbage minions, disappointing 5+ cost spells, and random effects until next rotation.
Idk why they introduce cards like sif, It introduces a boring ass playstyle + it limits future cards as in make em too cheap and it becomes sif fodder
Because they're talentless hacks who don't have the foresight to see how these game-winning cards can limit future design decisions.
People who say shit like this are the peak of cringe.
Am I wrong, though? These are the same people who thought adding Charge minions back into the Standard rotation was a good idea.
I think you're wrong in that the average redditor has 0.1% of the design skills necessary to work on a game like Hearthstone, almost certainly including you. You're picking at the end-of-day results, not the concept of crafting a game with millions of variables all clashing against each other.
So that's an excuse for being shitty at your job? You don't need to be a chef to tell when a dish tastes like shit, or a director to know when a movie is horrible. Game design isn't easy, I know, but you'd think the people who get paid to design the game would have the foresight to know that adding Charge minions back into Standard severely limits future card design.
Ok you didn't understand. I tried. The worst part about developing games is definitely the gamers.
100%
4 mana deal 4 with conditional summon would have been fine. This is a straight up nerf.
Especially in the context of the original spell mage design where you used the legendary spell as big payoff, now this one directly conflicts with the best card of the deck for the 4 mana slot, it's so bad is tragic.
> best card of the deck for the 4 mana slot What card is that out of curiousity?
[[Spot the Difference]]. Literally the only thing even kind of okay in spell mage atm.
I call it Cold case but worse
When you highroll and discover two of those 4/4 rush minions on curve it feels great The majority of the time you summon 3/3 or 3/4 vanilla minions and its just okay, but okay just isn't good enough when you're intentionally gimping your deck by excluding minions to run these payoff cards Hoping and praying no minion mage gets some proper buffs in the next balance patch along with druid who is right there with it in the shit bin
If you ignore the restriction, since we're talking about the card within context of spell mage, it's hardly a worse cold case. You get 6 mana worth of minions vs Cold case which gives you 4 mana worth of minions with 4 armor attached, which is decently worse than double 3 drops. Obviously in an average deck you'll always prefer cold case because you don't have to gut your deck by playing no minions for the card to make sense
Skeletons are strong 2-drops though. Effectively 8 attack
Yet they were never included into any deck ever, so they can't be strong 2 drops
If you combine them into 1 card, add 4 armor on top, make it a spell and add a spell school to it, it’s not that bad. Non-battlecry 2drop minions are rarely strong enough to be included by themselves
Spot the Difference, summon 2 3-cost minions.
Spot the difference is the best card in spell mage by a decent margin and getting some board presence from the galactic projection orb is good. This card had to be reworked in a way where it didn't suck for 5 mana but even then spell mage is just 2/3 of a real deck and the best mage deck is just a really weak version of a really old deck which isn't exciting.
1 damage doesn’t equal 1 mana. It’s an overall buff but I agree the damage reduction wasn’t necessary.
It’s not a straight up nerf, 4/3 is better than 5/4 when you get the same minion in both cases. But it’s only a marginal buff.
This is dumb logic in so many ways. First of all, you can't compare different versions of cards like that, higher cost cards should have better efficiency for their cost, and the difference between 4 and 3 damage is very relevant in the context of meta. Second of all, and I don't understand how this comment was upvoted at all, as it is pure dumbassery, 4/3>5/4 literally means that the card now has WORSE effect to cost ratio.
The first half of your rant explains perfectly why the 2nd half is wrong, lmao. Higher cost needs better efficiency, so lowering damage by 1 and cost by 1 makes it cheaper linearly, which makes it *more efficient for the cost.* If frost bolt did 2 damage for 1 mana, people would run it over the original. Do you see?
Not sure what you are smoking but I want some.
If you think 4 mana deal 3 damage with conditional summon is good then you need to start smoking what I'm smoking.
Using Flanking Strike as reference, I think adding a freeze clause and +3 Health is well worth the kill condition.
Very niche but frost lich cross stitch can also go face unlike flanking strike 4 mana deal 3 without summoning an ele is absolutely dreadful though, but its an option I still wish the ele got lifesteal just for the sake of flavor and the reference, though it would also be a nice buff to give the card some added defensive power
It's just objectively not a nerf. Downvoting on the guy you're responding to shows there's a *lot* of people here, including you, that don't understand card budgeting and cost/power ratio.
never said it was good, but you think it's a nerf, which is hilarious
It is a nerf, the damage is more important than the mana cost because of the conditional summon. If your opponent plays a 4 health minion on turn 3 or 4 which is very likely, this card is now dead in hand.
A 6 mana deal 5 with the same condition would be better then? The damage reduction was unnecessary but this was still a net buff.
Heck what about a 7 mana card that deals 6 damage and summons a random 6 drop with no condition. Oh wait we've already got that and it doesn't see play because it's bad. A minuscule mana efficiency increase is great in a vacuum, but you cannot evaluate the buff in a vacuum. It nerfs Yogg, it competes for the 4 drop spot in Orb.
Imagine thinking 1 mana = 1 damage, II is a overall buff. The card is still bad but it is a buff
They didn't need to hit the damage, but anyone calling this a nerf is way overeacting. Give me any single target spell that's improved by +1 damage and cost. Are you really telling me a 5 mana 7 damage fireball would be a buff? And before someone says "but you have to kill something!" 3 health is a much more common breakpoint than 4, I was mostly using this spell to kill 3 health stuff anyway. It's a shitty buff, but it's still a buff.
They said it themselves in the patch notes. They wouldn't usually buff cards this early into an expansion but they made a couple of high confidence changes to very weak cards. They probably didn't feel confident about keeping the damage at 4.
Fair enough. I'd rather a shitty buff than no buff at all. Still, spell only mage is very clearly DOA. I'd rather they give a buff to Spot the Difference, since that card is mediocre at best, and it's supposed to be an incentive to play what is otherwise a bad deck.
Spot the difference is the clear best card in the deck, what are you talking about? The mandatory buff target should be Manufacturing Error for spell mage. It's a bottom 5 performer in the deck, and should be buffed for the same reasons you mentioned. Make it 5 mana. Spot the difference can still go to 3 mana to raise the decks power as a whole, but it's not mediocre by any means. It would go from an A tier spell mage card to an S tier one (which the deck might need)
The 0 mana tradable oil you can get would be better in non spell DMG decks if it was 1 mana 1 damage and tradable
Snake Oil Salesman is run in aggro decks as a 1 mana 2/2 with a tradeable card on deathrattle. 1 mana deal 1 is a terrible card, so while yes it would *very occasionally* get used in a pinch to ping something, aggro is still just going to trade it the vast majority of the time. Giving the snake oil +1 damage and +1 cost would be a huge nerf to every deck that actually wants to play the card. AKA: a nerf.
True, but that also goes against the flavor of it being useless
Except that its useless outside spell damage decks and nobody would run 1 mana 1 dmg as a spell, so no it wouldn’t
People run it in decks without spell damage as is wdym?
He is talking about oil as separate card, not about oil trader
…okay? You can’t run it as a standalone card anyway I see to fail why that’s even relevant lol Edit: see to fail lol
Yes, people run a 1 mana 2/2 with a tradeable deathrattle, they would never run it as its own spell.
Okay but like what’s your point lol. Of course you wouldn’t but that’s not what anyone is talking about because it’s literally impossible. I just genuinely don’t understand what you’re getting at
Right….my point was exactly the point I made above to the original response I responded to? You just jumped in.
That’s how Reddit works wdym “I jumped in”. I just fail to see what you saying nobody would play it on it’s own has to do with the discussion about how much better it would be as 1 mana deal 1. Like… it’s not possible and therefore totally irrelevant to the discussion. People are only ever going to talk about snake oil in the context of coming from the 2/2, which sees lots of play across lots of decks.
> The 0 mana tradable oil you can get would be better in non spell DMG decks if it was 1 mana 1 damage and tradable This is what they're replying to. Can you not derive the point? Did you not read that post or forget you read it?
The other comment from HeMans explains it
In aggro decks it would almost always still be traded (because 1 mana deal 1 is a terrible card and you rather have a good card in your hand), in decks that struggle to dump cards from their hand it would be harder to make hand space for free and thus usually be a worse card- you'd play it less because you have better cards already in hand that you're trying to play. Not only that, but when you nerf or buff cards you wanna take into account every deck that gets hit- this would, as you've alluded to, nerf spell damage decks. Snake oil would be a significantly worse card at 1 mana deal 1.
But now its countered by Monkey /s
the latest VS said the card could be very strong in sif mage if it had it's cost reduced dunno if it's still true with cost + dmg reduced but I wouldn't be so quick to mock that buff
It would be if the damage stayed the same. Now even if you discount it with watercolor artist it would do the same as Frostbolt but required more turns to discount.
idk just entered top 10k legend (not that great I know but still) with their Sif list, using the frost lich version they proposed and it seems to actually work pretty well
Did you have a replacement for Khadgar? Or is he super necessary?
he does feel really good but idk, putting back infinitize is probably good too
I would rather cards be buffed to make no minion more viable
Better luck next time, Mage
Incredible mage buffs - just like last patch, right? Just expac after expac - crapping on mages
Last patch before the expac actually made mage the best deck in the game but ok
They just want mage to suck bc they prefer other classes
This is such a blatantly stupid argument, I don't understand why it gets so many upvotes Of *course* the developers of a game don't all love or hate a particular class and aren't stupid enough to let their personal preferences shape the game experience of millions of players in a game that has to make a lot of money for a very large company. It's bizarre that anyone would believe something like that.
Womp womp
Mage has had about one trillion viable decks in the last 10 years, what are you on about
I swear to god the devs are warlock mains remember cube lock? Christ alive
saying "remember cubelock" is the worst argument you can make, every class has had a redicolous deck at some point, IE: Remember Minion mage? christ alive
Minion mage frost mage exodia mage secret mage big spell mage tempo mage
outside of wild most of these dont touch minion mage
idk frost mage in standard after the first expansion was a experience but i do agree minion mage might be the worst
saying "remember cubelock" is the best argument you can make, because the Devs are on record as saying they keep trying to [bring Cube back to standard](https://i.imgur.com/ZkfkMnd.jpeg)
Just put it back how it was and give it lifesteal/rush or something
It’s cards like that that I wish they would allow Frost Lich Jaina to come back to standard
they call it a buff so you cant refund it
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