Hearthstone Players!

@Sebastien, there's no shame in using heatharena. It's a great tool. I use it probably two out of every three runs, and I have largely internalized its advice at this point. Even if I don't use it for the draft, I track my runs over there for sure. You should know that even the tool's authors (merps and ADWCTA) don't take its advice every time. I think it undervalues Grim Patron by about ten points, I think it overestimates how good 2-mana spells are generically (I think it counts them as 2-drops?). It's under constant development. One thing that jumped out at them recently was how amazing Flame Leviathan is . Keep at it, it will help you get better.

I also want to recommend watching at least one ratsmah coaching video . He takes a player through the draft and play and you can pause and see how'd you choose to do something and compare it to what ratsmah says to do. I learned more doing this than doing anything else.

in the little time I played Hearthstone, I used that arenavalue tool as well. I found it enormously helpful and I also used it mainly to track wins. I couldn't believe how bad I was doing with top-tier arena classes compared to others.

My buddy Dom has won a pretty big hearthstone tournament or two and he says the choices that software makes to determine draft choices is really flawed and quite often just totally dead wrong.

I've been punching above my weight for a number of Arena runs now, picking up five or six wins on what I think are pretty dubious decks.

Last night I finished a 6-win run with a Dragon-based Paladin, and built a Hunter (to pick up some wins for a 60-gold quest). Went 3-0 for the night.

I found out that Steamwheedle Sniper can be just brutal in Arena. I also picked up two Glaivezookas and an Eaglehorn in that deck, and their side of the board just stays kind of empty. I passed early on one of those taunt pirates that's cheaper with weapons, then it just kept giving me weapons as the best option. Derp.

I should check out Arenavalue, but it looks pretty tedious without the Windows-only client. Am I missing something?

Not sure what ArenaValue is. HearthArena is a website that you can have up when doing the draft to help make picks or just log a run into afterwards to keep track of your runs/rewards.

that's what Arenavalue is too. Maybe they're the same thing.

One of them has three different databases based on different people's views of what a good arena value is. One guy is really popular and has his own website. That's the guy to pick, I forget his name

Yeah, same idea. I didn't even notice that Barney had mentioned a different one.

But the same feeling applies. You guys are entering 90 individual cards while you're drafting to let it figure the stuff out?

That's seriously running up against my "fun vs. work" threshold. Especially on my iPad (where I usually like to play), it's a total non-starter because the iPad will drop the Hearthstone connection if it's backgrounded at all.

So it's play on my laptop, or run two devices while I'm drafting. (and then again to upload all the results of the games).

Maybe I'm phenomenally lazy, but I rarely even snap a picture of the deck I used in the Arena, much less spreadsheet it while I'm picking.

And then I run into Mages in the Arena with Alexstraza, and it's just all fuckin over.

That's ragequit-inducing.


edit: nah, nevermind, I'll just go 0-3 against 3 mages in a row. It's all good.

It's not that labor-intensive to do it on a computer; you can start typing in the names of the cards and Arenavalue autocompletes the fields with possible cards. It doesn't take that long but I can certainly understand not wanting to switch between two devices.

I checked out Heartharena before I was doing Arena and was just grinding my classes to Level 10, so once I saw it requires registration I promptly forgot about it until jeb mentioned it. Arenavalue is free and simple to use, I just wish all of the cards in Arenavalue had notes so I could read why they're good or bad. I guess I'll worry about how accurate the ratings are once I know the cards better; it's good enough for now.

I ended up going 2-3 last Arena but I completed 100 Gold and 60 Gold quests today with a decent Basic + Naxx Hunter net deck so that took some of the sting off. As grueling as Arena can be I'm kind of glad I have a decent Gold balance to tide me over as long as I don't start doing 2+ Arena runs per day.

First Arena run using heartharena.com.... 5-3! A very aggro Mage build that had 2 Flamestrikes for when shit got out of hand. That was MUCH better than what I've done on my own. Netted me 100 gold plus a pack. That's worthwhile right there. Unstable Portal is so much fun!

Second run now and this time I'm playing a Warrior. Don't think it's a great deck. Lacking early drops.

i entered a competition at work to win an iPad Air 2. I didn't really want it but cuz of all this hearthstone talk and the fun I had using arenavalue, I'm really hoping I win it now so I can play this game again.

That Warrior deck was not good. Gotta grind some gold so I can get back to Arena.

Warrior is statistically and actually the most difficult class to win with in Arena. If you get four good weapons (from: Fiery War Axe, Death's Bite, Arcanite Reaper) you will win a bunch of games. You can have a paucity of small minions because your face will clear out their turns 2/3/4/5 and then ride shields and taunts while your Slow Pyroblast (Arcanite Reaper) kills them. If you get no weapons, or shit ones like Ogre Warmaul, you could realistically 0-3.

You folks learning Arena: Mage > Paladin > Priest > Hunter, Warlock, Shaman, Druid > Rogue >>> Warrior. Rogue can be awesome, but you need to be a good pilot. Paladin is arguably better than Mage, but Mage can get plain dumb decks and get a bunch of free wins.

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I was at 1-2 with Priest in Arena yesterday and faced a Rogue. Things were going fine until she played Turn 3: Coin, SI:7 Agent to kill my guy, Cold Blood, making the SI:7 a 7/3 on an empty board. I need to draw SW: Death. But I don't. FOR A LONG TIME. I poked this thing a couple of times, but she's been using Voodoo Doctor and Earthen Ring Farseer to heal it back up and mash me. I finally stabilize at 7 life with Holy Nova for 3 (Velen chose something). Then followed a solid 8 turns of perfect HS to get the win. I wanted to tape that shit and post it. Best I have ever played.

It works on computers too, Barney. Just sayin'.

Arena is so much about getting the right stuff. The first few turns are critical, and the Mage ping lets you paper over not getting the right 1 and 2 early minions.

I probably made some mistakes in my last 3-3 Hunter run (3-0, then 0-3), like "don't play mad", but overall, I was just getting a shitty curve out of my deck, and then watching Mana Wyrm and pings eat apart my early plays.

Not Sure wrote: It works on computers too, Barney. Just sayin'.

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Don't ...tempt me, NotSure! I dare not install it. Not even to play it casually. Understand, I would use this game from a desire to have fun... But through me, it would wield an addiction too great and terrible to imagine.


also I have an iMac so hopefully it doesn't even work on that

Black Barney wrote:

Not Sure wrote: It works on computers too, Barney. Just sayin'.

.

Don't ...tempt me, NotSure! I dare not install it. Not even to play it casually. Understand, I would use this game from a desire to have fun... But through me, it would wield an addiction too great and terrible to imagine.


also I have an iMac so hopefully it doesn't even work on that

It's Blizzard, they love Macs. Totally works. I prefer playing on my iPad because I like dragging the cards around. But it actually plays better on my MacBook than on my old iPad2.

Anyway, Public Disservice Announcement over.