by JR Cook - 9 years ago     show comments

While a lot of people scream for nerfs when cards feel overpowered, I don’t see many people calling for buffs to long forgotten cards. In my mind, every non-joke card should at least be a decent fit in a viable deck. Also, the meta would grow a lot more interesting if a wider array of cards suddenly started seeing play. So without further ado…

Welcome to the first ever edition of Mending Mondays, a weekly feature where I, Dannie “IAmDiR23” Ray will take a look at some of the worst cards in the Hearthstone Classic Set and evaluate why they are deemed to be horrible, and what could be done to fix them.

Why is it so bad?

1 Health, 1 Health, 1 Health! Magma Rager dies so easily that it’s not even funny, Shield Bearer and Target Dummy have to be the only things that this guy trades favorably against.  Against mage he’s not only a free card for your opponent but also a net 1 mana loss, at least against Druid or Rogue you could get some damage out of it but Shiv and Wrath can make the Magma Rager be a freeby for your opponent. But that’s not all, Magma rager doesn’t even have good stats to warrant being so vulnerable.  And don’t give me that its just a basic card, Yeti is also F2P and has very good stats.

Most of the times Magma Rager is waste of time, his best uses appear to be in warlock where he can be killed by Void Terror, Shadowflame, or get discarded by Doomguard. Be sure to add Recombulator because literally any 3 drop should be better than this.

To summarize:

• Too Vulnerable, often a wasted card.
• Weak Stats
• Doesn’t trade well

What’s the Design Intent?

So you could take the Magma Rager image and name and make literally any other card and it would likely be better. But what’s the fun in that? We want to stay true to the spirit of the card so we are going to try and find out what’s Magma Rager proposing as a strategy. Magma Rager’s defining feature is that it has a lot more attack than it does Health. It is definitely supposed to be a high risk-high reward card. Very easy to remove, but if its not removed then it can really hurt your opponent. It should really thrive in aggro decks where your early storm of minions should control the board and allow Magma Rager to stay uncontested. Maybe if you manage to give this dude Divine Shield it could actually amount to something…

Possible Improvements

I understand high risk/high reward, but would you use a 8/1 Magma Rager? I guess that if you can threaten Giants, Rag, and some of the other big boys with it you could try and get some value out of it.  But still, It probably wouldn’t be considered consistent enough and it wouldn’t be likely to see see play.

So basically we want to give this card a chance to actually affect the board, this means giving him Charge, a Battlecry, Deathrattle, a Weird Ability or more Health. But you can’t really give him charge, that’s Wolf Rider territory. Also, which Battlecry could you give him? Damage and Buffs are taken by Ironforge Rifleman and Shattered Sun Cleric, I guess you could make him deal damage to yourself as a sort of a super Flame Imp but I guess I don’t like that idea very much.

The Result

This is the vanilla version, 7 stats just like Spider Tank, still very vulnerable to a lot of early removal such as Holy Smite, Wrath, Frostbolt, Backstab, Eviscerate, Dark Bomb, Arcane Shot. Also AoE removal like Consecration, Holy Nova, Explosive Sheep, etc. And while doesn’t really trade well with many 2 drops, but could serve as a really potent win-more card in aggro decks.

Basically a Leper Gnome on steroids, super easy to be removed but at least will hit face for 3. Fits with the Deathrattle theme in many aggro decks and compares decently to Wolf Rider in functionality.

With just a small adjustment, Magma Rager could stop being one of the worst cards in Hearthstone and become at the very least a considerable tool for starting players trying to build an aggro deck. See you next Friday, if you have any suggestions for me to tackle in next week’s edition, send me a tweet @DannieRay23, or post something using the comment section below.