Please help me decide on a character to play

[Kobal 13]

I have recently picked up Hearthstone, my previous TCG experience being limited to Magic the Gathering. Now that I have leveled all the nine characters to level 10 to unlock their basic class specific cards it is time to decide which character to develop primarily, and, even more important, which deck to work towards with crafting.

 

Of the nine characters the three I liked most so far were Warlock, Mage and Priest. May have to do with the fact that in M:tG I was most comfortable playing blue based late game control decks, and I found similar enjoyable here, so ideally my target deck of choice would be of the late game control variety as well. More importantly, though, it should be competitive. I also browsed the suggested deck lists for a bit, and got some impressions. On to the clases I liked:

 

Warlock:
Clearly the big selling point is the hero power, almost custom made for controllish game play. The Handlock deck from the deck section looks very interesting, albeit maybe a little bit weak to direct damage.

 

Mage:

Seems to have about the best or at least most efficient control spells of all the clases (Fireball, Polymorph, ...). The Freeze Mage deck looked very interesting, probably the most intriguing of hte bunch because of its relatively unique gameplan. However the big weakness to the warrior is a bit of a downer.

 

Priest:

During my run to level 10 it felt like the most controlling of all the three. However, it also seems to be most reliant on a big board presence. No minions to heal is a big disadvantage, naturally. As such it also seems the most vulnerable to any sort of sweepers, not sure how much of a detriment this will be later on.

 

So my question to those of you familiar with the Hearthstone constructed 'endgame': With which of these three classes will I become the happiest?

Edited August 2, 2015 by Kobal

[positiv2 950]

Warlock can be difficult to play if you play handlock. Even though warlock is probably the strongest, play once you are sure you fully understand the game.

Mage’s decks are quite powerful, especially at lower ranks and range from easy (the basic deck) to hard (freeze). Out of those three, mage is my favourite. Mage also offers cheap aggro and midrange decks.

Priest are great beginner class (in my opinion) but you dont see many priests at legend rank. If you ever decide that you want to try aggro or midrange, priest will be useless.

If you think you know the game well enough, I recommend warlock. If not, then probably mage.

[yamimisaki 1]

It is the general consensus that all 9 classes are equally balanced (more or less, anyway) and I'm sure you'll be happy with any of the three. My advice would actually be to play with all three (and others) a bit more, only disenchanting cards that are strictly unplayable (e.g. Force Tank MAX, Wisp) or cards from a class you know you will never play (this was rogue for me) and slowly build up decent decks for all three of them.

Control decks in Hearthstone are not the same as permission control in MtG. The control decks are more of a board control, similar to Abzan Control which is currently in standard, or even like some of the slower midrange decks. So you might want to see if that style still fits you, as I find the two to require different strategy. There is also the fact that the metagame is fairly fast as of now, at least in Asia server (which is where I play). I'm currently playing a Midrange Hunter (which is fairly fast) and I'm being outrun by a lot of the faster Hunters and Zoolocks (efficient Warlock decks which use the card drawing Hero Ability to get more gas for aggro). I fear that a control deck may not currently be viable.

 

For the classes you mentioned there are actually both aggro and control options, although Mech Priest never really took off and is not considered to be good right now. For Mage you can play either a control Freeze Mage strategy, or aggro Mech or Tempo mages. For Warlock there are demon based Midrange decks, as well as Aggro Zoolock (mentioned earlier) and control Handlock. For Priest the only viable choice right now is Control in my opinion. All these lists can be found in the constructed section of this website, though some of the decks may be a bit outdated.

If you're free-to-play I think a basic Mage is going to do well for the time being, given the class cards are extremely efficient. Don't bother trying to build decks from archetypes just yet, though once you have enough spare dust a good budget deck to work towards would be Mech Mage, Tempo Mage and Zoolock. I know they're aggro decks so it doesn't fit your playstyle but control decks tend to be more expensive.

It may be worth saving up gold for (or just buying) the Naxxramas expansion given that the cards found within are extremely useful to many classes, and it's good value for money.

I think that is all the advice I can think of right now.