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[Haly]

I think that was their desired state for Arena. Before it was the top 10% of players effectively farming the rest, but now all the randomization makes it more equalized, which increases Arena's attractiveness.

I personally hope this is just a step to something bigger like a proper draft mode but is probably just endgame as far as Limited goes.

 

[JesseZao]

Arena has become 100x worse with GvG. You have openings with Mechwarpers, Unstable Portals, Zap-o-matics that just got out of control too fast and there's no coming back in the face meta. Mid-game is full of insane RNG minions like shredder and bombers, blastmages etc that make games very unpredictable. Except one thing is predictable. Once you snowball, there's no coming back anymore thanks to all the deathrattles.

Getting 12 wins is just a roll of the dice... 12 times.

I'm pretty mUch of the same mind. I cashed out the rest of my gold for packs and I'm just doing ranked/deckbuilding now.

 

[johnsmith]

I'm averaging over 100 gold per arena run, so that basically makes packs half price, and even better when you count in dust and bonus cards. So I'm going to keep doing arena unless my win rate drops. But I think it'll go up as I get more familiar with the new arena meta. I'm still not sure what the top class is at the moment, though I've had the most success with paladin, and that's without drafting a single quartermaster. The time required isn't an issue as I still enjoy the game despite the raging, and if I wasn't playing arena I'd just be grinding wins in ranked for another gold hero.

I'll probably make another legend run in January once my collection is solid and the meta sorts itself out.

 

[Xamtheking]

Arena has become 100x worse with GvG. You have openings with Mechwarpers, Unstable Portals, Zap-o-matics that just got out of control too fast and there's no coming back in the face meta. Mid-game is full of insane RNG minions like shredder and bombers, blastmages etc that make games very unpredictable. Except one thing is predictable. Once you snowball, there's no coming back anymore thanks to all the deathrattles.

Getting 12 wins is just a roll of the dice... 12 times.

I don't think it's worse
I think we are nowhere near used to it yet
In time, we'll probably think of GvG as normal

 

[Xanathus]

I'm still getting ~7 wins in arena, it's still generally the same except the card pool is diluted by more minions which means removals are at a higher premium and should be valued higher.

 

[zoukka]

I don't think it's worse
I think we are nowhere near used to it yet
In time, we'll probably think of GvG as normal

Of course. But the RNG and punishing turn-2 opening have increased.

 

[Servbot #42]

Decided to make a Rogue Mech deck. It's fun so far, it won its first two games and got a salty message asking if I spent money.

I too made a rogue mech deck and while it can be powerful i had mixed success with it. Here's what i got so far:

Gonna have to switch a few things up in order to win more consistently.

 

[embalm]

Of course. But the RNG and punishing turn-2 opening have increased.

I always felt losing in the early game usually meant losing in the late game. I think GvG increased the value of those 1s, 2s, and 3s and makes it even more important to try and cover yourself in those areas.

Drafting 5 to 8 good 2 drop minions is important for any deck. I think it's more important than any legendary you might draft.

This is also why Priest, Paladin, and Mage are probably rocking the 6+ wins. I think they have the best Arena board clears. Holy nova with a few damage minions can turn game around for priest, blizzard and firestorm can easily 3 for 1 in arena, and paladin catches up with weapons, hero powers, cheap heals, and tokens that can suck up tempo. All things that let you turn the game away from those first 4 turns.

 

[Haunted]

I feel like there are a lot of really strong openings atm.

 

[zoukka]

Zap-o-matic openings are GG if you don't draw direct removal. Which would be fine if zap-o-matic wasn't a complete no risk on curve minion...

 

[Celebrimbor]

Shaman murloc doesnt really work, running out of steam far too fast.

 

[ViviOggi]

Warlock can be really strong in arena now as well. I got one to 11 the other day with only one Shadowbolt, a Sheep and the Whirlwind from two Infernals in terms of removal. Just zerg zerg zerg and abuse the op hero power.

 

[partyphone]

this is pretty good so far.

 

[egruntz]

It's fucking crazy how well Control Hunter counters Control Warrior. I haven't lost to one yet. Played a BUNCH.
Zoolock is also finally getting creamed. YAY.

 

[ViviOggi]

It's fucking crazy how well Control Hunter counters Control Warrior. I haven't lost to one yet. Played a BUNCH.
Zoolock is also finally getting creamed. YAY.

To be fair depending on your rank there's a fuckton of Dennises running around today who have no idea how to play control decks. Ask caesar I've played some unreal trashlords today, release flood is real

 

[Permanently A]

I've decided to stop picking Mad Bomber in arena. Its not good for my sanity.

 

[caesar]

To be fair depending on your rank there's a fuckton of Dennises running around today who have no idea how to play control decks. Ask caesar I've played some unreal trashlords today, release flood is real

This might be the highest concentration of dennis plays I've seen since the early open beta yep.

this is pretty good so far.

Si:7 still too good to take out.

 

[TetraxShards]

I've decided to stop picking Mad Bomber in arena. Its not good for my sanity.

Time to replace him with Madder Bomber.

PUT YOUR FAITH IN THE BOMBS!

 

[Haly]

Disagree. The more I try Rogue decks, the more I feel that SI:7 is what should be cut early on in the deck building process. Minions are very resilient these days, either through high HP, defensive skills, or Deathrattles. Oftentimes you have to use a weapon charge as well to take out a minion cleanly, and Rogue no longer has the luxury of "hero power go". For the small tempo gain of a good Agent, you're giving up a lot of card advantage that you can't easily make up.

It was best back when 3/2s were all you had to worry about. But for modernor aggro decks, what Rogue really relies on is Blade Flurry, and for Control decks, two damage to a minion hero is trivial.

The same is true, I feel, for Backstab. The spell tempo game is gone. It's now all about sticky, efficient minions.

 

[Haunted]

I love my Scarlet Purifier, but drawing him when there's two Nerubian Eggs on the board just makes me sad.

 

[caesar]

Disagree. The more I play try Rogue decks, the more I feel that SI:7 is what should be cut early on in the deck building process. Minions are very resilient these days, either through high HP, defensive skills, or Deathrattles. Oftentimes you have to use a weapon charge as well to take out a minion cleanly, and Rogue no longer has the luxury of "hero power go". For the small tempo gain of a good Agent, you're giving up a lot of card advantage that you can't easily make up.

It was best back when 3/2s were all you had to worry about. But for modernor aggro decks, what Rogue really relies on is Blade Flurry, and for Control decks, two damage to a minion hero is trivial.

The same is true, I feel, for Backstab. The spell tempo game is gone. It's now all about sticky, efficient minions.

Minions have become more resilient, it's tough to know with rogue these days tbh. Miracle is so inefficient now and then Blizzard decide to give them weird cards like a 4/1 pirate and sabotage. I think some mechs such as arcane nullifier are pretty bad though, you need to have constant damage output as a rogue.
The 2 damage isn't trivial in their case because the potential damage output often puts them very close to lethal. In my experience anyway, I will confess that I have played 95% miracle though.

 

[Kotetsu534]

I'm doing as well in Arena as I usually do (normally finish in the 4-7 area unless I have a great deck, can usually get 3 wins with even my worst drafts). Mages seem even more prevalent among the high ranks than usual - I wonder if everyone else is struggling to draft enough removal while they have the same/more.

 

[zoukka]

The spell tempo game is gone. It's now all about sticky, efficient minions.

Might be the beginning of the end for HS.

 

[Mixed2k]

So I've been doing arena almost non-stop since yesterday and was feeling really bad about the cards that I was getting from the packs. Went to check the number of cards I have, and I have the equivalent to 19 packs opened.

All I got were 3 epics: crush, the shaman murloc and coghammer.
But fear not, I got 6x glaivezookas and a golden one !
I'm feeling like shit, at least I just had a 12-2 arena run to cheer me up.

 

[Raytow]

How are you guys playing arena? its pretty hard to win gold.

 

[Xanathus]

Might be the beginning of the end for HS.

The thing I hate was the nerf to Gadgetzan because Miracle was such an interesting non-standard deck and wasn't overpowered at all especially with all the anti-spell cards introduced. I guess the issue was spare parts but I don't think they were nerfing Gadgetzan with Miracle Rogue in mind but were afraid of Gadgetzan being used by other classes who could better utilize spare parts.

 

[suko_32]

How are you guys playing arena? its pretty hard to win gold.

I'm having success getting consistent 5-8 wins by just zerging my way through with more 2-3 drops than before GvG. Game feels more aggressive now.

Also, Glaivezooka is amazing in arena.

 

[Mixed2k]

How are you guys playing arena? its pretty hard to win gold.

Just play mages man, that's the secret. They were the best before but now they are even better because of flame canon (another common rarity removal, as if mages needed more).
Edit: also early game is mega important now, there are so many good 2 and 3-drops.

 

[Dahbomb]

I have been doing pretty awful in Arena lately, only got two 6 wins and then a bunch of 3 or lower wins. Today I went against 3 Paladins and all opened with multiple Shield Bots and I had Hunter. I used Explosive Trap and one of them pulled out an Egg. Both of them had Sylvanas as well... and this is on game 1 and 1-1. Even at the start you are thrown to the wolves... that's not how it used to be, you didn't get paired up with insane decks from the get go. Also the Muster for Battle into Quartermaster is some insane bull shit as well.

Basically you need a godly opener in every game in additional to having some strong late game with fat minions. Godly opener ensures you have the upper hand and fat minions are needed because there are so many sticky/hard to kill minions that games invariably go later than usual. The 4 drop isn't as important as it used to be... now people are coining out Spider Tanks into Tinker for insane value.

I guess I haven't played Arena in a long ass time it's going to take a while to get used to.

On the other hand I am doing much better in Constructed. Did well with both my Druid and Warlock. Unlike Arena, Constructed has a bunch of newer players.

 

[Xanathus]

How are you guys playing arena? its pretty hard to win gold.

Still going fine, 9 wins last run and at 10 wins 2 losses this run. It's still all about picking high value cards and having a good curve. I notice that every opponent has a legendary card after 7 wins though (except me).

 

[Mobius and pet octopus]

I'm pretty sure the Ogres will hit the right target 50% of the time, no matter how many minions are on the board.

Right, but when it misses it has an equal chance to hit all the remaining targets. I wanted that chance to hit face to be lowest. I basically turned his ogre into removing 1 hp minions. And that is much preferred to taking 6 damage to face. If he removed his desired target, that is the worst likely result.

Got my first gvg legendary.

Toshley.

That's not great right? All the spare parts seems good for a minion heavy deck maybe?

Toshley is pretty good. Spare parts are pretty good imo and the stats on toshley are good.

 

[ViviOggi]

Unlike Arena, Constructed has a bunch of newer players.

Arena has lots of new players as well, I keep seeing absurdly bad plays especially regarding trading even at something like 3-0. They just rarely make it higher than that before getting farmed by players who know what they're doing.

Case in point, this just happened at 5-1:

 

[Dahbomb]

Is it a specific time of day? Sometimes I do get newcomers who make obviously bad plays but there have been enough times where even the game at 0-0 was down to the wire.

I guess I need to be drafting better... usually I finish a draft and look at it thinking "yea this is not going past 3-4 wins".

 

[MrAstronaut]

I've actually been doing better with arena runs since GvG came out. Up to an average of 5 wins instead of 3. It may have something to do with significantly less 4-flamestrike/fireball mages.

On another note I've been experimenting with a Rogue mill deck. Still not viable (I don't have many of the new cards), but still really fun to play.

With Arena only dropping GvG packs now, my hopes of unpacking a Nozdormu are even lower.

 

[ViviOggi]

Is it a specific time of day? Sometimes I do get newcomers who make obviously bad plays but there have been enough times where even the game at 0-0 was down to the wire.

I guess I need to be drafting better... usually I finish a draft and look at it thinking "yea this is not going past 3-4 wins".

Not that I noticed, but yeah sometimes you're matched against future 12-0 decks when you haven't lost one yet, nothing you can do.

Re: drafting you really just gotta zerg it up now with GvG and grab some good card draw. Miss an early drop and you will get punished.

 

[egruntz]

:O Got the 300 gold big winner quest...Didn't think I had any left to get lol

 

[Mobius and pet octopus]

Disagree. The more I try Rogue decks, the more I feel that SI:7 is what should be cut early on in the deck building process. Minions are very resilient these days, either through high HP, defensive skills, or Deathrattles. Oftentimes you have to use a weapon charge as well to take out a minion cleanly, and Rogue no longer has the luxury of "hero power go". For the small tempo gain of a good Agent, you're giving up a lot of card advantage that you can't easily make up.

It was best back when 3/2s were all you had to worry about. But for modernor aggro decks, what Rogue really relies on is Blade Flurry, and for Control decks, two damage to a minion hero is trivial.

The same is true, I feel, for Backstab. The spell tempo game is gone. It's now all about sticky, efficient minions.

This might be the highest concentration of dennis plays I've seen since the early open beta yep.



Si:7 still too good to take out.

Minions have become more resilient, it's tough to know with rogue these days tbh. Miracle is so inefficient now and then Blizzard decide to give them weird cards like a 4/1 pirate and sabotage. I think some mechs such as arcane nullifier are pretty bad though, you need to have constant damage output as a rogue.
The 2 damage isn't trivial in their case because the potential damage output often puts them very close to lethal. In my experience anyway, I will confess that I have played 95% miracle though.

I think si7 agent is still worth running but not necessarily an auto-include anymore.

I don't think he is any worse in gvg though tbh. In fact, if anything he has gotten slightly better if less deathrattles are being ran, plus the addition of spare parts makes him more likely that you'll have an easy time comboing him out. And then you have that pilot shredder being pretty popular so he can take out the first half on his own.

I thought spider tank would be pretty badass in this expansion but tbh I am not very impressed by its performance so far. It is like the yeti, great when you're ahead, rather poor when you're behind. Si7 agent has the power to swing matches and finish off big minions without you having to take face damage by using your hero power. In that sense he is much better in more situations than a 3/4 is. His downside is that he isn't a mech. Which makes him awkward to use in a mechdeck, but I think he is still good enough to run him...

 

[Ashodin]

I think auto barber mech is better than si7 now

 

[MThanded]

Tump believes in fel reaver and it has been failing him immensely.

I mean damn this is painful to watch. Discarded whole deck by turn 8.

 

[Haly]

His downside is that he isn't a mech. Which makes him awkward to use in a mechdeck, but I think he is still good enough to run him...

Yeah, I didn't meant to imply he was unplayable. But he's on the short list of "class cards to cut for new shit" as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Little Nemo]

So I like having all the new cards available but sort of hate having to go through the trouble of collecting them all again through RNG pack openings. I think I prefer the adventure mode model where you pay the money/gold upfront and get all the cards.

I like building and trying out new decks and it sucks when you don't have the cards you need. It's back to feeling like when you first started out with the game.

 

[FeD.nL]

My first shadow priest draft, working out quite well atm and is fun to play. Though i'm not really happy with the way the dark cultists are performing might have to swap them out. Will have to play some more. Did had a game against a paladin who on turn 10 plays Hero power, muster + quarter. My turn > Mass dispel + Holy nova, felt good.

 

[Raytow]

I meant how do you guys play Arena so often, as getting gold to unlock its quite slow, unless you guys spend 1.5 euros every time.

 

[Ashodin]

Obs you silence Fel Reaver after play yo

 

[Xanathus]

Man every time I tune into Trump's stream I'm reminded at what an awful player he is, getting roped all the time over simple choices.

 

[Mobius and pet octopus]

Yeah, I didn't meant to imply he was unplayable. But he's on the short list of "class cards to cut for new shit" as far as I'm concerned.

I still think he is the perhaps the best 3 drop minion in the game due to his flexibility later on in the game compared to other 3 drops, neutral only of course. Tinkertown technician is probably second since playing him on curve with a mech out is very nice, but not very guaranteed to happen.

Man every time I tune into Trump's stream I'm reminded at what an awful player he is, getting roped all the time over simple choices.

It is different as a streamer though. Playing while being broadcast to thousands of people etc.. Explanation of plays too. I often like to take my time myself personally.

 

[Xanathus]

I still think he is the perhaps the best 3 drop minion in the game due to his flexibility later on in the game compared to other 3 drops, neutral only of course. Tinkertown technician is probably second since playing him on curve with a mech out is very nice, but not very guaranteed to happen.



It is different as a streamer though. Playing while being broadcast to thousands of people etc.. Explanation of plays too. I often like to take my time myself personally.

He wasn't really explaining at the instances where he got roped because they were do or die situations, he just thinks too slowly. Still though that
Mech Reaver deck he's running is great. Brian Kibler was running a similar deck with mage that also had Antonidas for spare part synergy.

 

[johnsmith]

I meant how do you guys play Arena so often, as getting gold to unlock its quite slow, unless you guys spend 1.5 euros every time.

If you make 500 gold a week, and get an average arena return of 100 gold, that's 10 arenas per week. The best players average more than 150 gold per win and can play arena infinitely.

 

[Professor Lich]

Obs you silence Fel Reaver after play yo

I was thinking about doing something like that with a Priest actually. Could run a lot of silences for your opponents minions as well. Might be fun in the alleged burner Priest deck. I did run a Doomsayer thing where I'd silence a Doomsayer on turn two then get to a 7/7 or 14/14 on turn three. Was fun but didn't make it far.

 

[TetraxShards]

If you make 500 gold a week, and get an average arena return of 100 gold, that's 10 arenas per week. The best players average more than 150 gold per win and can play arena infinitely.

Assuming you get:
4 x 40 gold quests (160)
3 x 60 gold quests (180)

And you had to actually win games instead of the cast so many creatures/spells, that's 23 ranked wins, we'll add one to make it 24, that's 80 more gold.

So you can earn 420 just from the bare minimum of doing your dailies, which is almost enough for 3 entries. Assuming you win 3 games in each Arena, that's 150 gold or another ticket. So most players could reasonably expect to get 4 free goes (I'm TERRIBLE at Arena and I can get three wins most of the time).

I'd advise Raytow to look into ADWCTA's Tier List which is being updated for GVG, I got 8 wins from my first draft with that playing Druid (with no Ancients, one Savage Roar and one Swipe) and have been improving steadily ever since. Trump's iDraft series on YouTube is very good, even if the meta is regenerating ATM.

The best players is very subjective. Hafu is the only one I've seen who gets 7 wins consistently, and she's top 20 in the world. I'd like to see the actual numbers from Blizzard just out of interest, but that would probably kerplode their business model.