Hearthstone Patch News: Mages in for a slight "nerf" and arenas getting fixed

Blizzard is on the verge of implementing a new patch for Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft. The update was announced not so long ago by community manager Zhydaris and it is aimed to address two issues: Arenas and ... Mages. (You know I just die for nerfs in games)

It doesn't come as a surprise that yet another class gets it's cards fiddled around with, especially when it comes to Mages. That story my friends is as old as Blizzard ... as a matter of fact the Mage uses Blizzard as a spell and not the other way around! :p

Mages were generally built into a rather versatile class, successfully fulfilling the role of nukers and crowd controllers, using several tools in order to increase mobility, survivability and baking strudels. The overall combining of these traits have more than often caused Mages to be frowned upon and to cause frustration when going against them but were generally considered a great asset to have in your team. Avoiding going into more specific discussions and transitions that the Blizzard Mage concept went through, it seems in Hearthstone they've been met with the same strong reaction from their opponents. Nerfs are rarely good and such balances may cause these changes to backfire in the long run as they lead to a never ending circle of QQs.

However, we may say that currently Mage decks built around ice spells are a bit overpowered. The fact that it was possible for players to easily control the opponent's minions via the Mage class and spells such as Cone of Cold, Blizzard and Frost Nova, has led to an overwhelming amount of QQ and made this class stand out from the rest (as an easier and much faster to burn down your opponent class), thus increasing both it's popularity and the frustration it causes. More Mages, more QQ, path of least resistance - see this post for my take on nerfs, changes in gaming and Blizz games!

Meanwhile, here's a video of a control Mage deck in action:

According to several Blizzard posts such as this one, they are always monitoring game balance issues and in this case it all revolves around fine tuning cards and the synergy between them. Accordingly, they've decided it was time to address some of the cards that helped make it all happen:

[...] we’re not planning on too many additional patches between now and open beta, so we’ve also decided to take this opportunity to make a couple of changes to some Mage cards that utilize the Freeze mechanic. 

We’ve been keeping an eye on Freeze mechanics for the past few months, and we’ve decided to make some changes to certain cards that utilize Freeze in this patch: Cone of Cold, Blizzard and Frost Nova. These cards are all having their mana costs increased by one. We understand that the Freeze mechanic can be frustrating to play against, and we’re trying to minimize the amount of frustrating mechanics in Hearthstone while at the same time making the control-themed Mage a viable play option. These changes should allow the opponent some additional time to be aggressive with their minions and well as slow the overall pacing of the control-based Mage play style while still keeping Freeze playable in many different types of decks. 

As with all Expert card changes, Cone of Cold and Blizzard will both be disenchantable for their full value for two weeks starting from the day of the patch.

While dramatic changes in a card game such as Hearthstone can be pretty frustrating since earning or crafting new cards without spending real money isn't always a walk in the park, I think there is another very important aspect to keep in mind. Yes, Mage might have been out of line when compared to the other classes, yes a class can sometimes be frustrating to play against and Mage was so overly used it caused the opposing player to feel a sudden need to vomit (that's how I sometimes feel towards the Priest class, being an obnoxious class to play with as well as against it).

Teamwork gets it done lawl!

Yet stripping the Mage of it's most frustrating mechanics, such as control and spell nukes, will only make it stop feeling like a caster and a Mage. And this goes for all classes, their specific mechanics and cards that make them stand out from one another.

Be careful what you wish for people or we'll end up with having 9 classes (10 with DK and 11 with monk if ever) that are basically the same to play with and will rely on the same old boring, monotonous play-styles, hidden behind different spell names that essentially have the same effects (just like in WoW :p).