Magic: The Combattening - Hearthstone

[Paelos]

In arena for me it's still Mage and Pally > everybody else.

[trias_e]

Yeah Mage and Pally are definitely the best arena classes.  Or at least the easiest to do well with.  I'd also recommend not playing priest or warlock in arena, unless if you're a very good player.  You can see the general ranking here (although these stats have selection bias for better than average players):  http://www.arenamastery.com/sitewide.php

I do have to wonder how much of this is just that the 'worse' classes are easier to misplay.  For instance, taking a look at Trump's stats, his three best classes in the current patch are druid, priest, and warlock.  He still loses to mage and paladin the most, and crushes priest and warlock when he plays them.  It implies that other people are doing something wrong with those classes, and Trump is doing something right.  However, sample size is of course an issue. (only about 1k games played on the current patch)

http://local.se/trumpstats.pl

[Hoax]

I tried Priest in Arena and died horribly. I got 1 win, but on the whole I don't think the deck holds up well.

Admittedly this was before they did the big rebalance which included making MC cost 10 instead of 8 but Priest was easily top tier arena. The priest ability is the best ability for the type of games almost every arena game is.

Basically you fuck up all combat math and force less than ideal trades thanks to your ability and you win everything that isn't a steamroll or the rare arena combo you out doing 15+ damage in a turn game.

Its hard for me to imagine they have changed enough cards that Priest ability plus the best creatures isn't still top tier.

[trias_e]

Priest ability is generally considered fairly bad or at least mediocre.  It is good if you are ahead on the board, but if you are behind, it's useless.  On the other hand, top tier abilities are Mage, Rogue, Druid:  They are always useful and can affect your opponents board directly.  There is so much removal in HS that an ability that is purely defensive just isn't useful often enough.

The stats don't lie:  Priest has the worst winrate in arena.  Although it is partially due to being more difficult to draft for and class cards, I don't think the hero ability is helping the matter much.

[Morat20]

So far 4-0 with a Mage in the arena. Fun is playing that legendary that puts a fireball in your hand and then zapping the only minion with a chance in hell of killing it with a 0 cost ice lance (because I've got one little minion that is -1 to spell cost).

Next turn? Enemy has 15 mana, I have fireball in my hand (3 mana to cast at the moment) and...9 mana. :)

Edited to add:

6-1 when I finally quit for the night. Stupid priest on the last one Mind Contolled two giant minions (one the "cast a spell, get a fireball one") in a row. On the bright side, he had 13 health and I had two fireballs in hand and 10 mana. Gotta suck to just mind control a 6/7 and a 5/7 legendary and then die anyways before you get to use either of them. (I frost bolted the first one. Pity freezing doesn't kill taunt).

[Slayerik]

Best run I've had is a 7 win druid run. No legendaries or epics, not even a swipe. 4-5 wins are about my norm, I'm not sure if that's good or not. Hunter can be a lot of fun if you build it right.  It's all about Unleash the hounds in combo with the card draw/and or the +1 attack beast for one, even scavenging hyena works well with it. Doesn't cost all that much to play them all in one turn and really change the board. Also, you can play fast cards and help control the board with explosive trap, snipe, freezing trap.

[Morat20]

It helped that the game I played the absolute worst on, my opponent was just as bad. (My loss was to a rogue -- I simply kept drawing crap and they did not.)

I watched him do things like feed a 5/6 creature into my vaporize secret without using the 1/1 he had first, clear the board on mutual kills when he could have killed all of mine and still had a guy standing, etc.

[Ironwood]

Sometimes things just go bad.

[Job601]

5 wins is what you can expect from an average deck (because you're playing against some decks that are worse than yours.)  If you're getting five wins you're guaranteed enough gold to make arena just as efficient as buying packs.  If you hit 7 wins, you're guaranteed enough gold to go infinite and immediately buy another arena entry.  After a bunch of washouts I just went 12-1 twice in a row, first with paladin, then with shaman.  No legendaries or good epics, just lots of good rares and commons and the luck to not be forced to pick any bad cards.  For Paladin I really like argent protector and will pick him over almost anything except efficient removal.

[Rasix]

You guys are making me feel bad about how awful I am at this.

[Azuredream]

You're not the only one who sucks. I've done arena three times, netting 1 win, 5 wins, and 0 wins.

[proudft]

I did better before I saw those tier lists.  Won five games on my first outing, haven't broken three since.

I swear everyone just picks all the Taunt enemies.  It's pretty annoying.

[Ironwood]

Is Post Beta planning to reset this ?

[Paelos]

I can tell if a deck in arena is going to suck by about the 20th card. I hate it when that happens. But all I have to get is 2-3 wins to make back the value. At worst I've lost 15g I think overall value.

[Rasix]

Even if you 0-3, you still get a pack.  Just means you wasted 50 gold in the process.

My last run should have gone farther, but I had 2 matches where I was just not drawing anything and couldn't pull a fireball/flamestrike/poly all game despite having multiple of each.  Sometimes they RNG really reams you despite having a decent deck.

[Ingmar]

I can tell if a deck in arena is going to suck by about the 20th card. I hate it when that happens. But all I have to get is 2-3 wins to make back the value. At worst I've lost 15g I think overall value.

Sorrrrt of. You can't resell any of those cards so to me the break-even point is a lot closer to 'I got enough gold to flat out pay for the next Arena run'.

[Paelos]

Since the value of a pack is 100 gold, I look at break even of those plus 50. Granted it's not the same as break even gold, but to do that you have to be winning 6 games each time.

[Morat20]

You're not the only one who sucks. I've done arena three times, netting 1 win, 5 wins, and 0 wins.

I think my first Arena outing was 2 wins, my second was 1 win, and my third was none. :)

[proudft]

Welcome to team Peaked Early.

[Rokal]

Even if you go 0-3 you get some dust for crafting so it's not straight-up loss of 50g.

[Rendakor]

Giving this another shot in Arena using the spreadsheet, and doing much better. Although I got 0 cards above rare. 

[Paelos]

Giving this another shot in Arena using the spreadsheet, and doing much better. Although I got 0 cards above rare. 

It doesn't matter as much if you get a good class you like. I've lost more on classes I don't like with more rares and above, and won more on classes I like with less.

[Rendakor]

I was doing alright, went 3-2 as a mage (which I'm most familiar when) and then the game crashed on me like 4 times. I gave up and went back to Hex.

[Rasix]

Weird.  I've never had the game crash.

[MrHat]

I'm about to go 0-3 with a Druid deck that has Ysera and Cairn :(

[Rendakor]

I got some kind of connection error at the finding opponent screen, then it crashed to desktop. Repeatedly.

[Ironwood]

That's odd.  I've only ever seen small graphical glitches, like floating cards and minions.  It's been quite a stable beta for us.

[Morat20]

Arena, hunter with the worst freaking draw ever. It's 2-0 and I expect 3-0. I just got fistfulls of nothing. Every decent creature was 4+ mana, I had crap from 0-3 in terms of decent minions. Virtually no beasts at all.

Ugh.

[Paelos]

That's odd.  I've only ever seen small graphical glitches, like floating cards and minions.  It's been quite a stable beta for us.

Floating card is the most annoying I've encountered. It happens a ton. It's very silly watching that thing float there over somebody's card so I can't tell what to attack. 

[Ironwood]

So I had a wee level 4 lock and I thought, fuck it, I'm gonna make a wee deck.

He's now level 12 with 3 levels of Rating and this wee deck hasn't been beaten.  I have to stress that the lock was only 4 and had hardly any 'lock cards, but I threw it together with some of the other nicer cards I'd won with other classes.

I don't get it.  I don't consider myself a stupid bloke, but when I craft gratuitously, my decks suck and this thing I put in 'for funsies' is fucking rocking epic folk.

Odd game.

Still fun.

[Rasix]

On my lock deck, I don't actually use a lot of the lock cards from leveling up.  It does pretty well.

My hunter deck is doing pretty well at low-level ranked.  It's probably something like 8-2.  Luckily unleash the hounds, savannah highmane, and other hunter cards are really cheap to craft.  Works great with the vulture, knife juggler and bonus-on-death cards.

My last arena run, however, had no cards over 6 mana, and I didn't draw a single consecrate or any of the high value power cards (yeti, shield master, harvest golem, etc).  It did.. poorly. Sword of the divine and 2 BoK's at least made it interesting.

[Morat20]

Two arenas -- 1 win apiece. Not a good run. With one I just had shit cards, the other was just me sucking -- although I could have drafted better, because at the end I knew I had a serious minion and mana cost imbalance and I still didn't draft to fix it.

I started leveling Shaman (I figured it might help if I had some experience with all the classes) and I can't for the life of me work out the Shaman playstyle. Totems just clutter up your minion space, and some of them are nice but others aren't so great. I don't see how they really fit in.

I mean I get how you can have a field of shit 0-2s and then Bloodlust them or something and do serious damage, but it felt like a weenie deck where half your cards couldn't do anything but soak damage 90% of the time. I don't even know what sort of minions to fill the deck with -- taunts? High damage?

And then there's the spells and overload....I get the mechanics, but Shaman just plays...weird. I'm missing something.

[trias_e]

Shaman isn't too different from other classes.  One thing about Shaman is that most of their combo cards require you to have board control, so its imperative that you maintain board control at all costs.  They are kind of the opposite of mage, where you can let the opponent develop their board because you have such strong tools to deal with it.  Luckily, Shaman has some great tools to accomplish their goals.  Fire Elemental might be the best card in the game:  Take it over anything else.  Stormforged Axe, Rockbiter Weapon, Hex, Lightning Bolt, and Lightning Storm (if you're lucky enough to draft it) are all absolutely great cards as well.  I would recommend only drafting one bloodlust, and probably only one flametongue totem (debatable).  The minion that gives windfury is pretty good, but the actual windfury card generally isn't worth a spot in your deck.  Generally speaking with Shaman your goal should be to remove everything from their board every turn no matter what, hopefully slowly building up board presence in the process.  Then end games either via suffocation or via combo.  

For some general drafting ideas (mana curve, what type of cards are good), here's a 12 win priest deck:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/585853/Hearthstone_Screenshot_2.14.2014.23.27.35.png
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/585853/Hearthstone_Screenshot_2.14.2014.23.27.37.png

[Morat20]

For the record:

Fuck Murloc decks. Fuck murloc decks packed full of goddamn legendaries.  Especially at rank "I suck" on ranked list. How on earth is a guy with a themed freaking deck and legendaries ranked that low?  EVERY card he played was a murloc or a legendary. I spent my entire time squashing his multiple buffing murlocs.

I guess he just bought his way there. Too much for my "crappy Shaman who still doesn't have half his stupid Shaman cards".

Shaman doesn't seem to have a lot in terms of "clearing the field" either.

I'm playing ranked because casual still seems full of mis-labeled players.

[Ironwood]

Dude.  This is a game where you can pay for cards.

Of course you're gonna find this.  Retard probably dropped a wallet-full to get there.  Bloody stupid it is too.