Hearthstone class identity review Part 1 : The mage.
Why do you play Hearthstone ? To have fun, to relax after a busy day ? To compete and grind the ladder against other players ? Or maybe you just want to feel powerful. Maybe you want to be a shaman or a druid for an hour or two. In video games,you must embody the character you’re playing. You must feel that you’re the character.
Introduction
In Magic the Gathering where you can mix up to five different colors in your deck with each its own playstyle, you can really play a deck that suits your personality. Or any personality, you can be agressive, or defensive, a mix between boths, cunning, sly, frank, and so on…
In Hearthstone, you can not mix class cards together. Instead you can choose between 10 classes.
Each class has acces to different spells and minions to summon. So you must choose your class wisely. And find the one that suits you.
It is very important to embody the character we choose to play.
But is it really the case in hearthstone right now ? Do you feel like a druid when you play druid ? Or a hunter when you play hunter ?
To answer to the question and see the whole picture I decided to write an article for each class and compare the spells and abilities of each class in hearthstone to their counterparts in WoW.
Every article will have the same structure :
- The class description in WoW and Hearthstone
- The specialities of the class
- What a character do in Hearthstone that heshould be able to do
- What a character can do in Hearthstone that he shouldn’t be able to do
- What a character can not do in Hearthstone that he should be able to do
The first article of this ten part series will be to everyone’s favorite random spellcaster : The Mage.
The Mage
When I think about a mage, I think of someone who will cast powerful spells. Someone who will summon minions to protect himself while he’s throwing fireballs around him and eventually leave the battle without a scratch while everything is burned around him. Let’s see the descripttion of the mage in Wow and HS :
World of Warcraft Mage description
According to Wowpedia :
The mage (or magician) is a damage-dealing spell-caster that specializes in burst damage and area of effect spells. Mages are well known for their formidable damage output, as well as their range of crowd control abilities. Mages are also capable of performing a number of utility roles, from conjuring refreshments for their allies to teleporting or opening Portals to major cities.
Hearthstone Mage description
According to the “Establishing class identity” blog from 2019 :
Mages have mastered the arcane arts and use their wide range of spells to take on even the most aggressive of opponents. Their defensive cadre is limited — while a good Mage usually has a useful tool to deal with any situation, a great Mage conjures the right tool when they need it.
Strengths: Spells (big and small), damage spells, Secrets, board clear
Limitations: Minion swarms
Weaknesses: Healing, Taunt, minion buffs
Ok so that’s pretty clear, the mage controls the board, denying his opponents the abilty to attack, and he buys time to cast powerful damage spells.
Specialities
When you level up in WoW, you can choose over 3 specialities. The 3 specialities a mage can choose while leveling are Fire, Frost and Arcane. Here is a quick review of the main advantages of each specialization and how they translate in Hearthstone.
- Fire : Big damage on a single target or a small zone. Damage over time
Cards : Fireball, Flame Lance, Pyroblast
Effects : Spell Damage +X - Frost : Crowd Control, AoE Damage
Cards : Frost Nova, Blizzard, Water Elemental,
Effects : Freeze - Arcane : Damage, Mana boost, Casting time reduction
Cards : Arcane Blast, Primordial Glyph, Sorcerer’s apprentice.
Effect : Mana cost reduction, launch arcane stuff randomly.
What the mage does in Hearthstone that he should be able to do
Mage is indeed in hearthstone a class which can deal a lot damage quickly using spells. 15 damage in a single turn (fireball, fireball, frost bolt) in only 3 cards. You probably heard of Pyroblast dealing 10 damage in a single card.
The mage can slow down opponents with frost spells and reduce the cost of spells with Malygos or Primordial Glyph. Transform minion sinto sheeps with Polymorph.
Right now, there is a no-minions mage deck which feel really nice to play because when you play it, you feel like a mage. You try to protect yourself with freeze spells and you control the board until you can kill your opponent with face blasts : Fireball, Frost bolts and so on.
What the mage can do in Hearthstone that he shouldn’t be able to do
The random element : The random element is present in all of the Hearthstone classes in the form of the ‘discover’ ability. There are also a few neutral cards with RNG, Yogg-Saron and Ragnaros for example.
But the Mage class is impregnated with randomness. If you open Hearthstone, go into your collection and type ‘random’ in the search bar, you will find 37 cards for the Mage class. It’s the class with the greatest of number of RNG cards. Druid is last with 11 RNG cards.
At a point in Hearthstone, there was a competititve deck called Casino Mage. The deck was heavily RNG-dependant using cards like Babbling Book, Cabalist’s tome or Firelands Portal. All those cards are cards with high impact could generate the right minion or the right spell at the right time and turn a obvious loss into a surprise victory.
But why does the mage needs this ? A mage should use something like his superior knowledge of the Arcane spellls to win. Not casting random spells everywhere hoping it turns all his opponents on fire.
What the mage can’t do in Hearthstone that he should be able to do
- If we go back to the Hearthstone Mage description above , we read :
Their defensive cadre is limited — while a good Mage usually has a useful tool to deal with any situation, a great Mage conjures the right tool when they need it.
I’m not a fan of ‘Random genration’, I think you understood that. But like the Hearthstone team, I think that the mage needs to conjure what he needs at the right moment.
But I also think that the ‘right’ tool should be in your deck. Even if I’m against random card generation, if the range of discovered cards is limited to the ones that are in your deck. I think it’s ok. Mage should not be able able to generate random cards out of nowhere, you’ll need to have them in your deck first.
It will increase the importance of deckbuilding. You’ll have the possibility to add cards as 1-of in your deck, like a toolbox and still have a way to access to them easily. That fits the mage description well without adding another RNG layer to the game.
- Mage weapons :
I loved Medivh. He equipped a staff when you played it. Cool design. That made me wonder. Why Mage is not available to have any weapons. there is so much design to be explored. So many interestings staffs and wands that could a lot of stuff. Summoning minions, reducing spells costs, freezing stuff.
Blizzard please, give the mages the weapons they deserve.
Is the mage class going into the right direction ?
Maybe ! I’ll not cover each card of the new set but Ashes of Outland has 10 mage cards. 4 of them (including Solarian Prime) have the word ‘random’ on their text. Almost half of them. That’s a negative point for me
But the no-minions condition is a great design for mage. So much design space. They could do a card like the two odd and even minions I forgot the name which changed your hero power.
They also added one powerful spell without the word ‘random or ‘discover’ into it ! (Deep Freeze)
My top 3 mage cards of the set are :
- Starscryer : Simple, elegant, efficient. Great design.
- Incanter’s Flow : Once again, simple and elegant. Fits the Arcane speciality.
- Deep Freeze : Once again, great design. A fun and powerful card, no randomness involved.
So yeah, good ideas and a lot of randomness. Not perfect but the well designed cards are really well designed.
Do you agree ? or not ? Reach me on Twitter if you want to talk about card games and other stuff and give me your point of view about this article. I’ll be happy to talk about it. Next week : The Shaman.
And share this article around you if you think Mage needs weapons.
See you on the ladder !
