Hearthstone seems to (mostly) work again.

I started playing today and went 8-3 in my first Arena as Jaina.
(At least) Half of those matches were won by using Pyro. So my opponents probably hated me. I had a disconnect in my second match, likely because of server hiccups, and it was counted as a loss. Though I was behind in the game, so I'm not too angry about it.

What did I learn?

• Ancient Watcher is only useful if you draw at least 3-4 ways to 'activate' him. I drew him very early on, because the other choices were pretty shit and then only drew one Sunfury Protector to make him useful. No Defender of Argus or Spellbreaker. So not drawing the Watcher again unless I already have those cards.
• Frostnova was also not that useful. Probably better in constructed than in arena.
• Faerie Dragon was very annoying. Especially when I played a Mana Wyrm on 1 and was counting on Frostbolting the enemy minion on 2.

PS: Only reason I did that well, was that I watched quite a bit of streams in the past month. Thank you Trump and Hafu!

 

Watcher is an amazing card in constructed, but way too hit or miss for my tastes in arena. I don't like having to depend on card synergy for my draft to be useful. Nice run either way though.

In other news, freeze mage just got completely wrecked by a patch.
http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/forum/topic/10949904973

Good thing I switched away from that as my main deck, although I think I am gonna revisit my aggro mage deck to see how that works these days.

 

Brother got into the beta and he got freaking Illidan from the pack you get for completing the 'First Blood' quest.

I meanwhile got a golden freezing trap from a pack I bought today.

On the positive side, Mages are getting a nerf with the cost of Blizzard, Cone of Cold & Frost Nova getting increased by 1, as was mentioned above. Oops.

Think Shaman or Paladin will be my main class when I gather/craft the cards I want, liking the feel of both of them far more than the others.

 

all mages got completely wrecked.

with blizzard at 6 cost, mage will just die to weenie rush (most notably from warlock).

This is a huge overnerf.

 

Aite, who needs a key still? Pm me.

edit: just sent out my last one

 

My second Arena run was with Rogue today. I went 8-3 again. Did not draw a single Assassins Blade.
Had two losses early on, which is frustrating.

One was a mage who used Sheep 3 times in succession and a Fireball afterwards to take out my fourth big minion. They are just so mana efficient when they get lucky with the right spells. Flamestrike if you use lots of small minions, sheep/fireball if you use big ones.
You just have to hope they have a bad draw.

My last loss was against a Paladin. I had just turned around the game when he used a charge minion and Hammer of Wrath to go for my face. If he hadn't drawn one of those, it would have been my win.
But that's how the game is. Nothing unfair about it.

I'm not sure what I've learned this time. Maybe have better luck drafting cards?
Well, maybe think harder when using the Wild Pyromancer. Had one big misplay with this card. Tricky.

 

It was about time mage got nerfed. They were the one class pretty much everyone hoped they wouldn't go against.

 

Anyone have a key they could give me for a NA server?

 

Beta Keys are not region bound.
It only depends on the account where you register the key.

 

Nifty, that.

 

Added to my collection today with a Gold Wisp, best card ever.

Managed to somehow achieve 100 wins so that was a nice 300g reward, then my friend told me the next reward is 1k wins. Guess I'll go for beating the AI expert decks now for the easy 100g.

 

Playing warlock these days makes me feel like a jackass. Play control all game, keep their minion count down low with plenty of removal spells, if things ever get out of control I drop one of my two twisting nethers. When I get down to around 10hp I generally have at least 3 of these 4 cards in my hand, jaraxus, 2 molten giants, and a defender of argus. Jaraxus is generally a given because of sense demons at some point during the match. So much fun to drop both giants and then jaraxus, making everyone but a mage cry at that point absolutely makes my day.

 

A warlock tried that on me earlier.

Guess what I had in my hand?

Big Game Hunter and Youthful Brewmaster.

No Well Played!'s were emoted in that game.

-

In other news after ~71 games I've gone from ~rank 19 (can't recall EXACT rank, but it was very high teens) to rank 9. I'll reset my stats and see how high I get from here.

Overall stats: http://i.imgur.com/DSYfT9a.png

Going first: http://i.imgur.com/ojU5wYv.png

Going second: http://i.imgur.com/MBr30iL.png

(yeah, the first / second specific stats don't quite add up: The program sometimes misses it and sometimes I miss the program missing it - also sometimes the program misses entire games: I very rarely miss this but it's happened at least once that I know of)

Biggest win streak was 7 games, biggest loss streak was 4 (all of the mage games were pre-nerf).

I ended up crafting Sylvanys and replacing an Ooze with it, but it is otherwise the same deck I posted the other day.

Post mage-nerf patch, it's mostly been Warlocks, Druids, Paladins and Rogues. Before that, mostly Mages (heh) and Warlocks.

 

What is it that you are using to get those stats?

 

I'm using an old version of hearthstone stats

http://www.hearthpwn.com/forums/hearthstone-general/general-discussion/1143-hearthstone-stats

I'm going to upgrade to the latest now, since I'm 'resetting' for post R10 stats,

 

I will admit, if that happened to me then there would probably be tears. That's just mean.

 

Could be worse, apparently the top end of the Ranked system is dominated by Druids (somehow?) and aggro Warlock decks that're either Murloc or non-Murloc, watched a couple in action today vs Artosis and damn, those decks look mean.

That said he's not exactly using an ideal deck against them, with his whole plan being to try and stall vs an aggro deck till the late game where he hopes to Charge Alexstrasza into Gorehowl/Ravenholdt assassin, all in one turn - well, damage all in one turn.

Someone on the HS reddit explained it far better;

Still, I'm curious about how Druids are doing so well, maybe luck of the draw with an early double Innervate?

 

There are two types of Druid decks to my knowledge. There are the ramp decks and the control decks. Ramp decks depend on innervate and wild growth to ramp up quickly to big cards before your opponent has ways to deal with them. Druid control focuses on using huge taunts (ancient watcher OP) to survive until you get Ragnaros and/or Ysera out to finish the game for you.

Here is the variant of control Druid I am running.
2x Innervate, 2x Claw, 2x Wrath, 2x Ancient Watcher, 1x Faerie Dragon, 1x Loot Hoarder, 1x Sunfury Protector, 1x Healing Touch, 2x Swipe, 2x Argus, 2x Keeper of the Grove, 1x Nourish, 2x Starfall, 1x Azure Drake, 2x Druid of the Claw, 1x Sylvanas, 1x Argent Commander, 1x Ancient of War, Ragnaros, Ysera.

And yea, it's expensive as hell. I haven't tweaked it in a while, so I may play with it a bit one of these days, but it works pretty well.

 

From what I've seen on the ladder its mostly taunt druids that are doing well. They are focused almost entirely on the late game, running pretty much a new taunt creature every turn. The goal for them is to survive to the late game and then start dropping their big minions, ironbark protectors, ancients of war and lore, druids of the claw, and whatever legendaries they have. It works surprisingly well against most classes since everyone has started going super aggro.

 

How do you find the consistency of this deck? you seem to run a lot of 1-offs.

---------- Post automerged at 12:43 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:49 AM ----------

I miss the pre-mage nerf patch already

Warlock Aggro and Rogue Aggro were way less common, and my deck completely crushed the Paladin & Druid counter-mage-decks, while running 50/50 vs IB / Giant mages.