I disagree wholeheartedly. The idea of a one-shot spell is very cool, and Devour is a neat mechanic. It just needs to be balanced properly.
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Bone dragon’s multi-hit skull spam needs fixed and maw doing multiple rerolls on devour need fixed. Entangle needs fixed in general. Silence might need to be reversed to silence + mana drain. Once all of these fixes happen then maw + skull dragon will not be overpowered. Mercy needs a counter though cause turn 1 cast with maw as he is is too strong for now.
I wasn’t forming an opinion, mainly stating things that should be facts based on the original design of the card. I actually forgot to add my opinion, which I’ll add here in a moment, however I think there a few things to address. I wish I could face him, blame the console devs for that one! 
I looked at the card itself and analyzed what it wants, does, and offers. By those means, it’s balanced: were the card by itself broken, it would have been released in a different form or hotfixed very quickly. Devs must think the same way, because the card came out the way it did.
Not sure if non-personal response, or disguised sarcasm. Insert Fry here.
I clearly stated I’m a console player. We don’t even have that kingdom yet, ergo even if I was only playing ranked instead of working on all the quests, I would never see Maw. So no, not playing the same game, only the same name of the game…so the same name game…or is that game name? 
Now, has anyone here ever played any other games? When something seems broken, is it always? It’s more a 50/50, but let’s be honest here: the only thing that needs fixing about Ol’ Maw is his bugs, the rest is simple ‘better team building.’ After playing years of MTG, I’ve always heard that certain decks were ‘broken, you can’t beat then, that deck should be banned!’ but in reality they just didn’t know how to play around it.
The OP had the right idea: he posted his complaint and what he thinks should be done, but he also mentioned a way to try and beat it…and that is what we need to do first: come up with ways to be Ol’ Maw at his own game before we send some salty e-mails to some developers and have them fix it. Nerfing is never the answer: if the gamer literally can never get around it, then other things need to be buffed to bring it up to par.
Oh, and my honest opinion: if they HAVE to nerf it, it only needs one change. Just make it random and not a target, that way you can’t guarantee a pick the most advantageous pick.
I completely agree that devour is a great mechanic. It’s a frustrating one when it’s used against you though. 
However, I think Maw’s third trait is too much. They should lower the cast chance for hunger IMHO.
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Did you say magic?[quote=“ForsakenM, post:43, topic:7531”]
Just make it random and not a target
[/quote]
It was supposed to have the highest mana cost, wish it was tied with war to be honest. Only nerf it needs is mana increase only. Devour as a trait is good at 15% if it did a 15% roll.
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Lower than 15%?
Like, 10%? It’s already lower than any other percent chance, and it’s a legendary…he needs something good, right?
Seriously, did everyone forget about Stealthy, Silence and Draining mana? Also, new mana burn mechanic probably wrecks Ol’ Maw.
Makes me wish I could test some deck idea against him, but I can’t man! 
Mana drain can work against him. Mana burn, not so much, because he’ll still eat, and that heals him to basically full (at least).
You might have some success with a Silent-One or Psion-led team (provided you’ve traited them up), though once again, that’d help with Sandstorm but not Hunger. Otherwise, it’s a race to the yellow mana and eat before you’re eaten.
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You know, I didn’t think about a mana increase, that could also work to just give the opponent more time to react regardless of their deck. That is a nerf I would agree with if the bug fixes don’t solve the problem.
And yes, I did, although GoW has replaced MTG in my life for the moment until Elritch Moon takes my attention.
I did not.
I have a team that had only lost to Merciless Maw only once and that was because of cascades (from the sky) leading into multiple 4 of a kind skull matches (without a skull generator going off) and it just went very poorly. The team isn’t together just for Maw and wins 98% of every game it plays so far
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The best maw/mercy counter is maw/mercy
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I hope next week’s event fixes The Hunger Games meta.
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I don’t understand the problem with Maw+Mercy…
You just have to be sure that no 4-gems can be done during Mercy’ spell…
Sometimes you cannot avoid, okay. But sometimes only. It seems from your commentaries that it’s always happening.
I don’t have any issue with Mercy. In fact, she gave me a lot of yellow 4-gems. Quite a nice girl ;-).
Moreover, it’s well-know and discussed on this forum that transformers are bad when used by AI. The best example is KoS that can simply gives you many skulls… Now Mercy, a transformer, is too powerful when AI uses her?
I don’t find Mercy + Maw to be dangerous. It is Maw’s 15% chance to devour that is dangerous. It needs to be reduced to 10%. That way archer class lethal will actually be unique. Right now hero’s leathal is just a weaker version of Maw’s hunger.
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Considering the hard work to get archers third trait, i think archer should get a buff.
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To be fair, it’s exactly* the same amount of work Maw’s third is.
. * not exactly, but close enough for game-development work. 
I figured that you could get maw from a chest drop vs playing through a storyline x2
His trait?
I love Maw, but it is pretty easy to get him going off in turn one with a good board and Mercy. The glitch with his devour ability is definitely an issue. I do like that Maw can take out key troops, that mana cost and one time use has to be good for something. I believe there needs to be some balance, but I don’t want him to be useless. I would prefer the devour trait go down or get rid of the mana generation (though this can just as often help the opponent).
To get maw and level/trait him you can get him through chest drop (lucky) vs getting archer through a questline that happens after a questline. Then you go about traiting them and depending on your level archer is harder to get or depending on your resources great maw is harder to get. Then you have to account for their spells. You get maw’s spell out of the gate when you get him vs archer which requires 250 wins. That means you can get maws spell faster than archer.