I've been playing Hearthstone for a couple months now, and I keep seeing people claim that the break-even score for arena is 3-3, and 7-3 to earn a free arena run. Being overly optimistic in my arena skills, and lured by the chance of higher win, I've been using my gold mostly on arena. I am lucky enough to get at least 2-3 on most of my runs, but I have gotten a single 0-3. My highest so far was 9-3. Despite potentially losing 50 gold for each arena run over buying a card pack, I'm rarely disappointed by my loot in the arena. Even 0-3 got me a card pack and 20 dust.
Today, drained from trying to get to rank 10 in ranked (and maxing out the 100 daily gold from wins), I decided to just buy a card pack since I did not feel like playing the arena. This was the first time I was disappointed. In the card pack I got the typical 4 commons and 1 rare. I also got unlucky and all 4 of these commons were extras that went straight to dust. The rare was new, so I kept it. Had I dusted that too, I would have gotten 40 dust from this pack.
As I open more and more card packs, I'm more likely to get duplicates, in fact the likelihood of a duplicate is much higher than typical player thinks. After just a couple months on this game, I already have ~50% of each of current expansions and classic. This means that each card has 50% chance of being a duplicate. The likelihood that I get NO duplicates when opening a card pack is 0.5^5 = 3.125%. As I keep crafting/getting more cards, this number goes down exponentially.
With 75% of the deck, the likelihood of getting NO duplicates is just 0.098% (0.25^5). The likelihood that ALL are duplicates on the other hand is 24% (0.75^5). That means you have about 76% chance of getting at least one card you don't yet have from a card pack. Realistically, most of the cards you get will be dust. Realistically, most of the packs you open will have 1 rare and 4 commons. So really, the assumption of 100 gold = 100 dust seems flawed to me. It may be true when you're just starting out (week 1-2), but not for the rest of us. 100 gold is 40 dust, 50 at most if you factor in pity packs and occasional Epics.
What this means is that every time you get dust from arena (which is pretty common), you're coming out ahead. My 0-3 run above, for example, was effectively a break even. Worst case scenario, I would get 20 gold instead. I know I'm also not factoring in the "opportunity cost" of grinding 100 gold in Play mode, but is it really that fun to grind with the same deck rather than try new cards in arena?
It's a time constrain problem. Arena is just accumulating more and more gold for me as I don't play much and I usually earn way more than 150 gold in the time I need to finish an Arena run.
It's actually even worse than you think. You're mistaken when you say "After just a couple months on this game, I already have ~50% of each of current expansions and classic. This means that each card has 50% chance of being a duplicate" - in actuality, if you have half the cards, it means you have almost all of the commons and rares and are mostly just missing epics and legendaries. In other words, when you have half the expansion, you have most of the commons, so any given pack will also be mostly commons, and therefore mostly dupes.
I have a lot more fun "grinding with the same deck" rather than trying new cards in arena, so that's mainly what stops me haha.
Also I've gotten progressively worse at arena in recent years. When I played in the beginning (basically classic and GvG cards) I could usually expect at least 5 wins, so it was fun back then. I'm not sure what happened, but I'm just worse at arena now and I simply don't have fun with it lol, even the rare time that I do get 5+ wins (one free arena run a few months ago, I got 7 wins). Still just wasn't fun at all to me.
Anyways, yeah, continue playing whatever you have fun with haha.
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Twitch name: Anatak15 NA Legend Season 48, 49, 52, 53, 54, 74
For me, quests are the best for gold... not arena. Arena requires a level of expertise that when I haven't played for a whole expansion or taken a few months break (one and the same) I'm not going to rack up a lot of wins. I'm probably an average win rate in arena of 2.5-3. It's not worth my time and gold for arena. Even if I get a pack and 50 gold, the time it took when I could complete a quest in much shorter amount of time (and potentially against a friend who's also completing a quest) is more gold per minute than what I'll be getting in arena. If you have tons of time and can work arena all the time; then I'd agree it's worth it for trying to farm cards/gold. I just ask that you add the understanding that not everyone has time to do 3 arena runs with 450 gold. That and as previously mentioned, people like to play constructed-> definitely my category and it's not often that I'll get to play a semi decent evolve shaman deck in arena.
TLDR: Agreed that arena is a good way to farm collection/gold, but it's under the assumption that you have time for running arena (multiple times). If not, quests are the best way to go.
I used to use the same strategy to grind gold but I since I've collected all the commons and rares from this Expansion, it makes no sense to play arena anymore. Not only do I get an average 40 dust per pack, I usually end up getting nothing new.
If you’re paying 150g and get a pack and 20 dust, you lost 30g (since a pack is on average 100dust and costs 100g, 1g is about 1dust). So I think that with 3 wins on average you will be better off and below that, you will usually lose value.
When I first played this game in arena, my friend said to never spend gold on packs, only do arena. I stuck to this mantra for about 2 years, and I can definitely say it's worth it in the long run if you want to maximize profits and not concern yourself with constructed. This, of course, is assuming you are decent at arena, which if you stick to playing, you will be. My win rate fluctuated between 5 to 6.5 wins for any expansion.
However, there's a downside to this. One, it's a lot more time consuming. Arena runs take time (over an hour, often). You hopefully pick off your quests as you do arena, but you might still have to do quests on the side. Two, each game in arena matters way more significantly than constructed, so it can be more emotionally draining. And three, it takes a while to accumulate the cards of any expansion, so the first month or two you can be behind in constructed (if you care).
When they switched arena to standard and bumped the epic/legendary/spell rates, I actually quit arena and stuck to constructed. I bought packs with gold, and I found it to be more relaxing experience in Hearthstone. You can't "lose" anything tangible while playing constructed (other than time). I definitely am not raking in the dough as fast as before, but in general I'm a bit happy. I always mean to start getting back into arena every expansion, and every expansion I play maybe one or two arena runs and shrug it off.
I think there is also value (outside of gold, packs, dust) in doing arena. I learn so much about card interactions and I believe it makes me a better player / deck builder.
I have usually been playing standart/wild up til rank 5 the last years time and this is of course netting that nice golden epic dust (or a new epic). But with the recent changes to ranked I believe it will be easier getting to the rank 5 mark. So I do plan on spending more time playing arena after the rotation. Right now I do not have any kind of impressive win rate in arena, but I believe it to some extend can be a better way to earn gold if you can get over the 5+ average win rate. How much time and gold I will have to use to build a foundation for doing so is a completely different question.
So for a 0-3 run, I would rather have spend the gold on a pack as a could have earned some gold in standart in the time the 3 games + draft takes. Also working towards a higer rank which nets you more dust
In the long run yes, specially if you don´t have a collection but if time is a constraint you are better of buying packs cause the time to "get gud" enough to average 7+ wins may take weeks, months even a year, 3-5 wins gets you the same either you get even 100 gold pack + 10-50gold
0-3 is far from breaking even, 50 gold worth much more than 20 dust, you can't just look at the worse possible case and draw a general conclusion.
If you do 80 0-3 runs you will have 80 packs and 1600 dust, if you will buy packs instead of doing those runs you will have 120 packs, 40 packs are much better than 1600 dust (on average 40 packs will yield: 2 legends, 8 epics and 2400 dust worth of common\rare cards).
i generally do arena on my f2p runs, but once i have a solid collection the time a run takes and the RNG of decks ruins it for me. when i could create a decent deck and get my wins in a shorter amount of time, playing arena loses a lot of its value, especially when i just get super salty when the mage opponent has like 6 aoes and burn for my face
For me, quests are the best for gold... not arena. Arena requires a level of expertise that when I haven't played for a whole expansion or taken a few months break (one and the same) I'm not going to rack up a lot of wins. I'm probably an average win rate in arena of 2.5-3. It's not worth my time and gold for arena. Even if I get a pack and 50 gold, the time it took when I could complete a quest in much shorter amount of time (and potentially against a friend who's also completing a quest) is more gold per minute than what I'll be getting in arena. If you have tons of time and can work arena all the time; then I'd agree it's worth it for trying to farm cards/gold. I just ask that you add the understanding that not everyone has time to do 3 arena runs with 450 gold. That and as previously mentioned, people like to play constructed-> definitely my category and it's not often that I'll get to play a semi decent evolve shaman deck in arena.
TLDR: Agreed that arena is a good way to farm collection/gold, but it's under the assumption that you have time for running arena (multiple times). If not, quests are the best way to go.
I agree that the time invested is the biggest deciding factor for most ppl and for good reason, but what ur saying about quests is kinda irrelevant ... you can just play arena and finish your quests by doing so, thats what i do 99% of the time for example. I suppose i would see your argument being valid, if you like played HS each day only to actually complete the quests as fast as possible and thats it, but even then ... anyway, everyone should play the mode they enjoy and is worth their time ;-)
I've been playing Hearthstone for a couple months now, and I keep seeing people claim that the break-even score for arena is 3-3, and 7-3 to earn a free arena run. Being overly optimistic in my arena skills, and lured by the chance of higher win, I've been using my gold mostly on arena. I am lucky enough to get at least 2-3 on most of my runs, but I have gotten a single 0-3. My highest so far was 9-3. Despite potentially losing 50 gold for each arena run over buying a card pack, I'm rarely disappointed by my loot in the arena. Even 0-3 got me a card pack and 20 dust.
Today, drained from trying to get to rank 10 in ranked (and maxing out the 100 daily gold from wins), I decided to just buy a card pack since I did not feel like playing the arena. This was the first time I was disappointed. In the card pack I got the typical 4 commons and 1 rare. I also got unlucky and all 4 of these commons were extras that went straight to dust. The rare was new, so I kept it. Had I dusted that too, I would have gotten 40 dust from this pack.
As I open more and more card packs, I'm more likely to get duplicates, in fact the likelihood of a duplicate is much higher than typical player thinks. After just a couple months on this game, I already have ~50% of each of current expansions and classic. This means that each card has 50% chance of being a duplicate. The likelihood that I get NO duplicates when opening a card pack is 0.5^5 = 3.125%. As I keep crafting/getting more cards, this number goes down exponentially.
With 75% of the deck, the likelihood of getting NO duplicates is just 0.098% (0.25^5). The likelihood that ALL are duplicates on the other hand is 24% (0.75^5). That means you have about 76% chance of getting at least one card you don't yet have from a card pack. Realistically, most of the cards you get will be dust. Realistically, most of the packs you open will have 1 rare and 4 commons. So really, the assumption of 100 gold = 100 dust seems flawed to me. It may be true when you're just starting out (week 1-2), but not for the rest of us. 100 gold is 40 dust, 50 at most if you factor in pity packs and occasional Epics.
What this means is that every time you get dust from arena (which is pretty common), you're coming out ahead. My 0-3 run above, for example, was effectively a break even. Worst case scenario, I would get 20 gold instead. I know I'm also not factoring in the "opportunity cost" of grinding 100 gold in Play mode, but is it really that fun to grind with the same deck rather than try new cards in arena?
It's a time constrain problem. Arena is just accumulating more and more gold for me as I don't play much and I usually earn way more than 150 gold in the time I need to finish an Arena run.
It's actually even worse than you think. You're mistaken when you say "After just a couple months on this game, I already have ~50% of each of current expansions and classic. This means that each card has 50% chance of being a duplicate" - in actuality, if you have half the cards, it means you have almost all of the commons and rares and are mostly just missing epics and legendaries. In other words, when you have half the expansion, you have most of the commons, so any given pack will also be mostly commons, and therefore mostly dupes.
I have a lot more fun "grinding with the same deck" rather than trying new cards in arena, so that's mainly what stops me haha.
Also I've gotten progressively worse at arena in recent years. When I played in the beginning (basically classic and GvG cards) I could usually expect at least 5 wins, so it was fun back then. I'm not sure what happened, but I'm just worse at arena now and I simply don't have fun with it lol, even the rare time that I do get 5+ wins (one free arena run a few months ago, I got 7 wins). Still just wasn't fun at all to me.
Anyways, yeah, continue playing whatever you have fun with haha.
Twitch name: Anatak15
NA Legend Season 48, 49, 52, 53, 54, 74
For me, quests are the best for gold... not arena. Arena requires a level of expertise that when I haven't played for a whole expansion or taken a few months break (one and the same) I'm not going to rack up a lot of wins. I'm probably an average win rate in arena of 2.5-3. It's not worth my time and gold for arena. Even if I get a pack and 50 gold, the time it took when I could complete a quest in much shorter amount of time (and potentially against a friend who's also completing a quest) is more gold per minute than what I'll be getting in arena. If you have tons of time and can work arena all the time; then I'd agree it's worth it for trying to farm cards/gold. I just ask that you add the understanding that not everyone has time to do 3 arena runs with 450 gold. That and as previously mentioned, people like to play constructed-> definitely my category and it's not often that I'll get to play a semi decent evolve shaman deck in arena.
TLDR: Agreed that arena is a good way to farm collection/gold, but it's under the assumption that you have time for running arena (multiple times). If not, quests are the best way to go.
I used to use the same strategy to grind gold but I since I've collected all the commons and rares from this Expansion, it makes no sense to play arena anymore. Not only do I get an average 40 dust per pack, I usually end up getting nothing new.
If you’re paying 150g and get a pack and 20 dust, you lost 30g (since a pack is on average 100dust and costs 100g, 1g is about 1dust). So I think that with 3 wins on average you will be better off and below that, you will usually lose value.
long term, 3 wins on average seems pretty doable.
When I first played this game in arena, my friend said to never spend gold on packs, only do arena. I stuck to this mantra for about 2 years, and I can definitely say it's worth it in the long run if you want to maximize profits and not concern yourself with constructed. This, of course, is assuming you are decent at arena, which if you stick to playing, you will be. My win rate fluctuated between 5 to 6.5 wins for any expansion.
However, there's a downside to this. One, it's a lot more time consuming. Arena runs take time (over an hour, often). You hopefully pick off your quests as you do arena, but you might still have to do quests on the side. Two, each game in arena matters way more significantly than constructed, so it can be more emotionally draining. And three, it takes a while to accumulate the cards of any expansion, so the first month or two you can be behind in constructed (if you care).
When they switched arena to standard and bumped the epic/legendary/spell rates, I actually quit arena and stuck to constructed. I bought packs with gold, and I found it to be more relaxing experience in Hearthstone. You can't "lose" anything tangible while playing constructed (other than time). I definitely am not raking in the dough as fast as before, but in general I'm a bit happy. I always mean to start getting back into arena every expansion, and every expansion I play maybe one or two arena runs and shrug it off.
I think there is also value (outside of gold, packs, dust) in doing arena. I learn so much about card interactions and I believe it makes me a better player / deck builder.
I have usually been playing standart/wild up til rank 5 the last years time and this is of course netting that nice golden epic dust (or a new epic). But with the recent changes to ranked I believe it will be easier getting to the rank 5 mark. So I do plan on spending more time playing arena after the rotation.
Right now I do not have any kind of impressive win rate in arena, but I believe it to some extend can be a better way to earn gold if you can get over the 5+ average win rate. How much time and gold I will have to use to build a foundation for doing so is a completely different question.
So for a 0-3 run, I would rather have spend the gold on a pack as a could have earned some gold in standart in the time the 3 games + draft takes. Also working towards a higer rank which nets you more dust
In the long run yes, specially if you don´t have a collection but if time is a constraint you are better of buying packs cause the time to "get gud" enough to average 7+ wins may take weeks, months even a year, 3-5 wins gets you the same either you get even 100 gold pack + 10-50gold
0-3 is far from breaking even, 50 gold worth much more than 20 dust, you can't just look at the worse possible case and draw a general conclusion.
If you do 80 0-3 runs you will have 80 packs and 1600 dust, if you will buy packs instead of doing those runs you will have 120 packs, 40 packs are much better than 1600 dust (on average 40 packs will yield: 2 legends, 8 epics and 2400 dust worth of common\rare cards).
40 dust per pack is the worst case scenario for a pack, but what is the average? Has someone done the math?
i generally do arena on my f2p runs, but once i have a solid collection the time a run takes and the RNG of decks ruins it for me. when i could create a decent deck and get my wins in a shorter amount of time, playing arena loses a lot of its value, especially when i just get super salty when the mage opponent has like 6 aoes and burn for my face
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