1800277:

Your comment about Runetusk makes me feel like I'm talking to a brick wall. I wrote my OP about mages, not priests or druids, classes that have some of the best heals in the tcg. You do realize that the very Runetusk deck you cited contains FOUR copies of Greater Heal a card not available to mages. Similarly, your comment about warriors not being able to lock down the board like a mage implies you haven't played WoW pre-fires. In fact, even now I argue that mages are one of the worst classes for locking down the board. What possible evidence to you have to support this claim? I likely won't respond much more in this thread as I don't feel like arguing for mage's cause anymore. Plain and simple, this is a tcg not an online game and if you think mages health total is "fair and balanced" as opposed to completely arbitrary then we simply have quite different testing experience.

I realize that that you are talking about mages, not priests or druids, but i was using their life totals as an example. Maybe runetusk was a bad example because it has a heal card that is really good, but on the other hand, and you can correct me if im wrong, the top druid decks dont even use heals and they only have 2 more life than mages. 

Mages have plenty of cards to lock down the board like portal to go find an ally to help against the current match. Slow( i realize that its arcane only) to, and no pun is intended, slow down the opponent. Dragon's breath(fire only) to shut down pesky allies. Frost has both frostbite and iceblock, which can just stop threats in their tracks and make a game stretch out long enough to find your game winner. Did I mention the fact that they have some of the strongest interrupts in the game? I could probably drop a few other cards out there as well, but I think you get the point.

Ill be honest, i only started playing this game around the time that motl came out, so yeah, I really dont know the meta and how the game played pre-fires, or to really pre-motl for that matter, but Ive seen powerful mage decks. Just because they aren't top 8'ing everywhere doesnt mean they dont exist.(the one i played against top 4'd btw). Then again, i dont think its that fair or reliable to go off a tourney that came out a few weeks after sotb came out. Although it is accurate, I dont think a lot of decks were prepared for what they were playing against. I for one didn't think that druid would have been as big as it was, but it was and im sure druid will still evolve in the weeks to come.

...Well thats my 2c anyways...

1966116:

I realize that that you are talking about mages, not priests or druids, but i was using their life totals as an example. Maybe runetusk was a bad example because it has a heal card that is really good, but on the other hand, and you can correct me if im wrong, the top druid decks dont even use heals and they only have 2 more life than mages. 

I understand fully well that 2, let alone 5 or 6, health is quite a big difference, but my point is that mages can play with 25 life and win. It isnt game destroying/unbalancing as it is being made out to be in this post. Mages are strong and can play with 25 life and win quite a few matchups. 25 life really isnt stopping anyone from playing the mage, well at least not in my area.

As i said before, as in the pc game, casters are known for their lower hp and armor. If mages had 26 or even 27 life, I can almost guarantee that some of the rogues and druids would start complaining. If anything, feral druids should get a life increase. Their life totals while in bear form rival those of warriors in game, yet they have less life than warlocks in the card game. and when feral druids get life equivalent to warriors, the pallies and warriors will probably start complaing.

If UDE listens to all these complaints, every class will get more life set by set. Unfortuntately, all that would do is just put everything back were it started exept many cards, not to mention all of the old heroes, will become obsolete due to the higher life totals.

1966116:

If UDE listens to all these complaints, every class will get more life set by set. Unfortuntately, all that would do is just put everything back were it started exept many cards, not to mention all of the old heroes, will become obsolete due to the higher life totals.

1966116:

Mages are strong and can play with 25 life and win quite a few matchups. 25 life really isnt stopping anyone from playing the mage, well at least not in my area.

To the detractors: This is a legitimate concern. Who the OP is says something about that, but the argument speaks for itself. When the game was designed, there was good reason for mages to have less health than warriors -- it's supposed to mimic the MMO. However, if we forget about the lore the game is attached to, and focus strictly on mechanics, mages have a penalty with essentially nothing to compensate.

Here's a game-design challenge for you, if you still think mage is fine: Make a new class, whatever you want it to be, but the only rule is that the base health for heros of this class is 8. Just eight health. Think about how fast you could die. With that in mind, design the cards and accomodations for this class so it would have a reasonable chance to survive and win, without having a "(2): Win the game."

If you can do that, I will concede the point, and yet at the same time you will have proven it for me.

I think the problem with arguing with a more casual or local player is that the mage can build a deck that can beat any specific deck out there.  They do have some pretty good abilities, can wrack up some nice damage, can protect themselves against anything for pretty cheap, can really cheaply stop you from doing anything you want to do.  The problem is, they cant really do all of that in the same deck effectively, especially since with such a low life total you have to stack the deck vs fast agro decks to have any chance of survival and winning matches in a tournament.  Again, when your facing a good rush deck thats going to wramp up 30 damage on turn 5 or 6 you have to have 2 or 3 MORE answers in your deck than a hero with 28-30 life, and you cant rely on G Heals like the other low life total class, you also cant rely on armor or weapons as repeatable answers since caster armor and weapons tend to be low on damage and armor and high on cost, unlike say perditions or any number of often played items for other classes. 

What really makes me mad is how often mage abilities and items have drawbacks that seem unwarrented.  Netherwind crown sounds great, except no armor value and it costs 1 per use, plus it only targets allies.  Why does Nemesis cost less and activate for free?  Why dont they have any cheap 3 damage (3 being a very important number due to allies health values these days) instants?  Why doesnt metalmorph take away attack values?  Your still going to get Mortal Striked to death.  Theres tons more examples of little disadvantages to mage spells that dont seem to fit in light of their low health.

Alright, let's put this in another light...

Mages have 25 health. Warlocks have 28 health.

What does a mage have that a warlock does not? Lots of burn? I guess. Counterspells? Yes, but they aren't exclusive territory. Card draw? Nope, warlock has that. Stall? Nope, warlock has that also. AE? Certainly better off. So maybe a little bit, but warlock has ways to attack the hand, ways to remove cards completely from game, and access to special undercosted allies. The differences are really just in flavor...oh yeah, and warlock has an extra 3 health.

I could classify WoW games into two categories: blow-outs and "one more turn"s. In a rout, it doesn't much matter what class is being played. However, in the "one more turn" type of game -- either to stabilize or to land the killing blow -- mages lose that battle basically every time.

and it's not like warlocks don't have plenty of burn and counterspells as well (Remove Soul, Pagatha's Flip, Steal essnence, shadowburn, shadowbolt, etc.). Their flips are on par and even better than many of the mage flips.

Basically, mages should be moved up to 26 or 27 health, or get incredibly ridiculous flip powers.  For the drawback of playing with 25 health, Tazo's flip should cost 1, or be 2 and able to be used at any time. Ozzati's should cost 1 or 2 as well.

Agreed, however that doesn't retroactively help old mage heroes unless you want to errata them all. I would favor a course of action involving ability cards introduced.

my additions are thus:

in order to determine the validity of this argument, we need a form of measurement for health in the tcg.

i would like to set this up by saying that because all equipment in the game is represented with their own cards, the gear that mmo toons would have should have no bearing on the tcg heroes starting life totals.  that being said...

take ur lvl 70 toons, remove all their gear, look at their health totals.  my rogue has 4400, warrior has 5300, mage has 3900.  these are rounded numbers, and with no talent bonuses.  we can figure out how much 1 health in the tcg is worth because tauren heroes have +1 health to represent their 5% health racial bonus.  so a tauren warrior (because rogues/mages cant be tauren) are 5300 + 5% of 5300.  5% of 5300 = 265.   265 + 5300 = 5565.  so the tauren warrior has 5565 hp, my draenei has 5300 only.  so 1 health in the WoW tcg is that 5%, which is 265hp (small variance based on race, but roughly the same).

so warriors in tcg have 30 health.  in the mmo translates to 265 x 30 = 7950hp.  wait a second here... thats almost 2400 MORE hp.  and then if that warrior was a tauren in the mmo, he would have 8215.  my rogue should have 7155 by tcg standards, and so on thru the classes.  obviously we can see these health totals dont reflect the mmo.  thus brad is correct to say they are arbitrary numbers.  even if i didnt round the numbers they would be nowhere near these totals.

now reverse it using our figures as per the mmo.  if 5300hp is a warrior, that would be 30 health.  rogue at 4400 would be 27.  5300 - 4400 = 900hp.  30 - 27 = 3 health.  900/3 = 300hp.  so now 300hp = 1 health point.  Mages are at 3900, which is only 500 under rogues.  not quite 2 health under, but closer to 2 than 1.  so 25 for mages seems valid when using this method.  oh wait, no it doesnt.  because reversed is 300hp x 25 health = 7500hp; almost double the real hp on a mage.  so only in a pseudo relative kinda way do the health totals make sense, but really truly are just arbitraty numbers, most likely installed to give the game an average amount of turns before someone can win consistantly.

here are some life totals as per mmo when naked on various alliance races, numbers are rounded, not all classes represented as guild members dont always cooperate.
warrior = 5300
pally, rogue = 4400
mage = 3900
warlock = 4600

already im sure u can see my point here.  pallies have about the same hp as rogues!!!  so pally should be 27.  warlock could be 28 is close enough.  this model is much closer to the actual health totals in the tcg.  if the developers used something to figure these health totals, it was likely this method.  assuming all that, however, tauren heroes should lose their +1 health in the tcg, as the bonus varies greatly based on the class the tauren is.

IN SUMMARY all the health totals are arbitrary numbers thrown together in a false representative manner to immitate the mmo.  they should be redone, and taurens +1 health should be thrown out.