Hey everyone. So yeah, the title says it all. I'm unabashedly horrible at arena, lol. Even after playing for a while, and spending ~$20 on arena fees on top of ~1500g in arena fees, I just get spanked. The last 8 arena decks I've built I have had no wins. The most wins I've had is 4 (once), and it's pretty rare to get above 2 wins. So, is it worth it for someone to do arena when they are as abysmal as I am, or is gold better spent straight up buying packs and playing ladder? I'm a very casual player, full-time college student, so playing arena sucks in that it's an extra time dump just to get facerolled for a pack of cards and a spat of dust. I never really liked making draft decks, even when I played MTG (other than an excuse to hang out with friends and maybe pull some good cards), so is there another way to make decent gold aside from doing arena (and dailies + ladder gold)? Is it worth it trying to improve (are the gains that much more than just avoiding arena all-together)? Thanks for any and all feedback, including the expected "L2P noobsauce" comments :)
Solid advice Dr. Smash, thanks! I'm checking out your 12 win deck thread in between cramming for an exam, it's good stuff. Despite the incentive to spend my gold on the instant gratification of packs I think I'll save up some gold and keep ramming my head into arena (with some research). The potential to make that much gold from high win streaks is pretty incentivising, and maybe I'll find an enjoyment for deck drafting along the way.
Smcneal for extra dust try using the disenchant extra cards feature in your collection located in crafting mode. Also don't forget to hit the tiny x mark on your Daily quest that only give 40 gold so you can have a chance to obtain a new one with a higher reward.
Here are some general rules of thumb for drafting:
have between 6 and 8 cards of 1 - 2 mana cost.
have between 6 and 8 cards of 5+ mana cost.
a value minion is one whose health is greater than its mana cost, and whose attack is no less than the mana cost less two. So for a 5 mana minion, a 3/6 is acceptable, and a 4/6 is better.
a value minion can have health equal (or slightly less) to its cost if its card text is valuable, such as card draw, thus a 5 mana Azure Drake (4/4) is considered a good card.
your deck should have between 5 to 7 spells; too many spells and you'll find yourself with dead hands too often.
arena is about board control.
know the AOE spells of the other classes so you can prepare your board for them, and not over commit before they are cast.
watch a good arena player on Twitch, such as trumpsc, nl_kripp or itshafu.
You really need a complete trainwreck of a deck to get 0 wins and even then you probably got unlucky with strong opponents.
In deck-building you probably aren't getting a good curve and still picking weaker cards. A good trick is to look back every five picks on your deck as a whole and ask yourself what's missing. Card evaluation is something you just have to learn by playing with cards - I'll often choose a legendary I haven't played with before just to try it out. You haven't truly experienced how bad a card is until it's lost you an arena game or two.
In playing you're probably misprioritizing trades. Think through the possibilities and the end results - at the end of the day it doesn't matter what cards you play, it only matters what stats are left on the board and what resources you can save in hand. All too often newbs will waste a stronger minion on an attack where a weaker one will do, or something really inefficient like trade minions and hit face with a weapon. Save your removal and spells, it's usually better to "level up" a minion by trading than to waste a spell with immediate board impact. Learning how much damage each class is capable of and for how much mana is the key to basic anticipation of your opponent's next turn.
Thanks for the feedback everyone! I'd have to agree with all of you. I can chalk up to my miserable playing to bad picks, suboptimal plays, and maybe bad luck (but let's not pass the buck, I just hate arena). If there were a better way to make gold at this game, other than a gold farming bot or paying someone to an annual salary of a non-refundable best friend membership to play arena for me (so long as it's profitable, otherwise fired), I'd do it. But I'll take the advice to look at card-tier charts and watch arena people play to get a better feel for it. Thanks again for all the advice!
Priest is a bad class because it lacks decent class minions and, many spells don't help because arena is based on midrange minions which are 4/4 4/5 or 4/6. There are powerful combos but you need to get those while picking and then while drawing. In over 40 priest matchups I remember only 2 where I lost to a divine+inner fire combo. What's left are cultists, temple enforcers and thoughtsteal beside of more useful rares. Holy Nova needs spelldamage boost to be useful and mind control isn't of use in many games where the opponent doesn't have got a legendary/big taunts.
Although I do think it is in a general sense weaker than mage, paladin and druid, priest is far from bad in arena. Fully capable of that 7+ win range.
It is arena worth for me? My last 6 runs were (no particular order) 1,2,3,4,5,5 wins. 1 win I got with shaman with pretty bad draft and terrible luck (except for game where I won against mage and I had 1 hp left, othervise superfast zoo rushdown with destroying my board and my bad draws. Pala who won after about turn 6 avenge and he traded well after that point and hunter who cleared board with uth+mark and had 4/9 tauntjaw, when I tossed hex from my start hand-dumb play I feel now.) 2 wins was with paladin where I got terrible pick oportunities, where draft didn't gave me any removal and it was hard to play with 0 removal in arena.
It is arena worth for me? My last 6 runs were (no particular order) 1,2,3,4,5,5 wins. 1 win I got with shaman with pretty bad draft and terrible luck (except for game where I won against mage and I had 1 hp left, othervise superfast zoo rushdown with destroying my board and my bad draws. Pala who won after about turn 6 avenge and he traded well after that point and hunter who cleared board with uth+mark and had 4/9 tauntjaw, when I tossed hex from my start hand-dumb play I feel now.) 2 wins was with paladin where I got terrible pick oportunities, where draft didn't gave me any removal and it was hard to play with 0 removal in arena.
And that actually looks like an admirable win count (especially compared to me lol). At 6 arena runs you averaged 3.33 wins. I am beginning to see the appeal of arena though, despite my complete lack of skill, because there's really no incentive to gain rank on the ladder... at all (other than setting personal bests). I definitely don't have the time to invest in a grind to legendary in a single season. At least in arena there's the potential of some reward for playing well.
It is arena worth for me? My last 6 runs were (no particular order) 1,2,3,4,5,5 wins. 1 win I got with shaman with pretty bad draft and terrible luck (except for game where I won against mage and I had 1 hp left, othervise superfast zoo rushdown with destroying my board and my bad draws. Pala who won after about turn 6 avenge and he traded well after that point and hunter who cleared board with uth+mark and had 4/9 tauntjaw, when I tossed hex from my start hand-dumb play I feel now.) 2 wins was with paladin where I got terrible pick oportunities, where draft didn't gave me any removal and it was hard to play with 0 removal in arena.
And that actually looks like an admirable win count (especially compared to me lol). At 6 arena runs you averaged 3.33 wins. I am beginning to see the appeal of arena though, despite my complete lack of skill, because there's really no incentive to gain rank on the ladder... at all (other than setting personal bests). I definitely don't have the time to invest in a grind to legendary in a single season. At least in arena there's the potential of some reward for playing well.
Well there is the legend card back... but yeah I wish blizzard would add small rewards for playing ranked like card packs every 5 ranks or something.
While arena does allow you to learn the game better than in ranked imo, in terms of efficiency arena is only worth it if you can consistently get at least 2 wins
The ceiling for arena rewards is much higher than constructed. Even if you farmed the maximum 30 wins a day, you would only net 100g plus the daily quest. With arena there is no maximum limit, it's just how much time you have to play and how well you do.
The break-even point vs 100g packs is 3-wins. Keep in mind, though - that's break even for card acquisition, not gold acquisition. http://www.arenamastery.com/sitewide.php shows average rewards for 3 wins at 41g, 6 dust and 0.2 cards. An average pack nets something like 80 dust worth of cards - giving that 6 dust ~7.5g worth of value at a rate of 100g/pack. So that's ~48.5g per 3-win run, plus throw in a free card 1-in-5 times and you're right about at the 50g break-even point.
Of course, breaking even is not the goal - especially if you're not particularly fond of playing arena. All things being equal, if you don't want to play arena - then you're better off buying 100g packs than you are playing if you're averaging 3 wins. Personally, I would never recommend arena to a new player who does not enjoy the format. They're unlikely to average more than 3 wins and would need to invest considerable time to improve to the point where they're more profitable than buying 100g packs. If they do enjoy it, then the time and gold spent to improve is completely worth it, as it's the only way to acquire cards at a reasonable rate outside of spending real money.
Also, you could do some drafts in the Arena simulator, post the deck you ended up with here, and we can comment on your picks. If you can record your actual draft and play and post the video, that is also a good option for getting feedback and improving.
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Check out my motorcycle blog at ShiftHer.com ...or not.
In order for the arena to be more profitable than playing ladder and buying packs, you need to get greater than 50 gold worth of extra reward beyond the pack. Why do I say greater? Because you gain 10 gold per 3 wins in constructed.
According to Arena Mastery, the average reward for 3 wins (based on thousands of arenas) is 41 gold, 6 dust, and 1/5th of a card (usually common). Assuming 1 dust is worth about 1 gold (I'd say they're in the same neighborhood of value) and 1 random (typically common, but sometimes rare) card is worth about 10 gold, you're making a rough equivalent of 49 gold + 1 pack for 150 gold. In the process of getting 3 wins in constructed, you'd get 10 gold + 1 pack for 100 gold, thus being better.
4 wins ups the average gold from 41 to 66, resulting in a somewhat better reward than constructed.
So if you're consistently getting 3 or fewer wins, no it isn't technically "worth" it.
THAT BEING SAID you really don't have to go through quite the level of devotion everyone is talking about to become a 4-win-per-run kind of guy. I put modest effort in to learning the arena to get a little over than 4 wins on average. Should I want to improve further I would need to improve significantly. I'd say the general answer to your question is, if you're only willing to put the current amount of effort in to the arena then don't bother. If you're willing to put SLIGHTLY more effort in to improving, then it's totally worth it because the 7+ wins you'll get once in a while give ridiculously great rewards.
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Hey everyone. So yeah, the title says it all. I'm unabashedly horrible at arena, lol. Even after playing for a while, and spending ~$20 on arena fees on top of ~1500g in arena fees, I just get spanked. The last 8 arena decks I've built I have had no wins. The most wins I've had is 4 (once), and it's pretty rare to get above 2 wins. So, is it worth it for someone to do arena when they are as abysmal as I am, or is gold better spent straight up buying packs and playing ladder? I'm a very casual player, full-time college student, so playing arena sucks in that it's an extra time dump just to get facerolled for a pack of cards and a spat of dust. I never really liked making draft decks, even when I played MTG (other than an excuse to hang out with friends and maybe pull some good cards), so is there another way to make decent gold aside from doing arena (and dailies + ladder gold)? Is it worth it trying to improve (are the gains that much more than just avoiding arena all-together)? Thanks for any and all feedback, including the expected "L2P noobsauce" comments :)
No.
Though, I would suggest trying to improve. What you might find helpful is Trump's iDraft series on YouTube. Google it.
I'm going to guess, that right now, much of your problem is stemming from the draft.
Poetic.
Thanks, I'll google it.
Solid advice Dr. Smash, thanks! I'm checking out your 12 win deck thread in between cramming for an exam, it's good stuff. Despite the incentive to spend my gold on the instant gratification of packs I think I'll save up some gold and keep ramming my head into arena (with some research). The potential to make that much gold from high win streaks is pretty incentivising, and maybe I'll find an enjoyment for deck drafting along the way.
It's really about 3-4 wins for 50 gold. You'll very rarely get 50 gold at 3 wins, and almost never at 2 wins.
Poetic.
Smcneal for extra dust try using the disenchant extra cards feature in your collection located in crafting mode. Also don't forget to hit the tiny x mark on your Daily quest that only give 40 gold so you can have a chance to obtain a new one with a higher reward.
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheIncanedo
http://www.twitch.tv/incanedo/profile
Here are some general rules of thumb for drafting:
Poetic.
You really need a complete trainwreck of a deck to get 0 wins and even then you probably got unlucky with strong opponents.
In deck-building you probably aren't getting a good curve and still picking weaker cards. A good trick is to look back every five picks on your deck as a whole and ask yourself what's missing. Card evaluation is something you just have to learn by playing with cards - I'll often choose a legendary I haven't played with before just to try it out. You haven't truly experienced how bad a card is until it's lost you an arena game or two.
In playing you're probably misprioritizing trades. Think through the possibilities and the end results - at the end of the day it doesn't matter what cards you play, it only matters what stats are left on the board and what resources you can save in hand. All too often newbs will waste a stronger minion on an attack where a weaker one will do, or something really inefficient like trade minions and hit face with a weapon. Save your removal and spells, it's usually better to "level up" a minion by trading than to waste a spell with immediate board impact. Learning how much damage each class is capable of and for how much mana is the key to basic anticipation of your opponent's next turn.
I would say.... kinda....
If you learned what you did wrong or how to draft better, the extra 50g could be chalked up to training/lesson learned. Outside of that it is meh.
I'd go with:
0-3 wins: bad picks, bad play, or really bad luck
4-6 wins: average-to-good picks, good play, or a little extra luck
7-8 wins: good picks, good play
9+ wins: good picks, great play
In the end, good play will almost always get you over 3 wins, regardless of picks. Good picks with poor play won't get you past 3 wins without luck.
Thanks for the feedback everyone! I'd have to agree with all of you. I can chalk up to my miserable playing to bad picks, suboptimal plays, and maybe bad luck (but let's not pass the buck, I just hate arena). If there were a better way to make gold at this game, other than a gold farming bot or paying someone to an annual salary of a non-refundable best friend membership to play arena for me (so long as it's profitable, otherwise fired), I'd do it. But I'll take the advice to look at card-tier charts and watch arena people play to get a better feel for it. Thanks again for all the advice!
Although I do think it is in a general sense weaker than mage, paladin and druid, priest is far from bad in arena. Fully capable of that 7+ win range.
It is arena worth for me? My last 6 runs were (no particular order) 1,2,3,4,5,5 wins. 1 win I got with shaman with pretty bad draft and terrible luck (except for game where I won against mage and I had 1 hp left, othervise superfast zoo rushdown with destroying my board and my bad draws. Pala who won after about turn 6 avenge and he traded well after that point and hunter who cleared board with uth+mark and had 4/9 tauntjaw, when I tossed hex from my start hand-dumb play I feel now.) 2 wins was with paladin where I got terrible pick oportunities, where draft didn't gave me any removal and it was hard to play with 0 removal in arena.
And that actually looks like an admirable win count (especially compared to me lol). At 6 arena runs you averaged 3.33 wins. I am beginning to see the appeal of arena though, despite my complete lack of skill, because there's really no incentive to gain rank on the ladder... at all (other than setting personal bests). I definitely don't have the time to invest in a grind to legendary in a single season. At least in arena there's the potential of some reward for playing well.
Well there is the legend card back... but yeah I wish blizzard would add small rewards for playing ranked like card packs every 5 ranks or something.
While arena does allow you to learn the game better than in ranked imo, in terms of efficiency arena is only worth it if you can consistently get at least 2 wins
The ceiling for arena rewards is much higher than constructed. Even if you farmed the maximum 30 wins a day, you would only net 100g plus the daily quest. With arena there is no maximum limit, it's just how much time you have to play and how well you do.
The break-even point vs 100g packs is 3-wins. Keep in mind, though - that's break even for card acquisition, not gold acquisition. http://www.arenamastery.com/sitewide.php shows average rewards for 3 wins at 41g, 6 dust and 0.2 cards. An average pack nets something like 80 dust worth of cards - giving that 6 dust ~7.5g worth of value at a rate of 100g/pack. So that's ~48.5g per 3-win run, plus throw in a free card 1-in-5 times and you're right about at the 50g break-even point.
Of course, breaking even is not the goal - especially if you're not particularly fond of playing arena. All things being equal, if you don't want to play arena - then you're better off buying 100g packs than you are playing if you're averaging 3 wins. Personally, I would never recommend arena to a new player who does not enjoy the format. They're unlikely to average more than 3 wins and would need to invest considerable time to improve to the point where they're more profitable than buying 100g packs. If they do enjoy it, then the time and gold spent to improve is completely worth it, as it's the only way to acquire cards at a reasonable rate outside of spending real money.
There is a great tier list right here on HearthPwn to help you in drafting.
Also, you could do some drafts in the Arena simulator, post the deck you ended up with here, and we can comment on your picks. If you can record your actual draft and play and post the video, that is also a good option for getting feedback and improving.
Check out my motorcycle blog at ShiftHer.com ...or not.
In order for the arena to be more profitable than playing ladder and buying packs, you need to get greater than 50 gold worth of extra reward beyond the pack. Why do I say greater? Because you gain 10 gold per 3 wins in constructed.
According to Arena Mastery, the average reward for 3 wins (based on thousands of arenas) is 41 gold, 6 dust, and 1/5th of a card (usually common). Assuming 1 dust is worth about 1 gold (I'd say they're in the same neighborhood of value) and 1 random (typically common, but sometimes rare) card is worth about 10 gold, you're making a rough equivalent of 49 gold + 1 pack for 150 gold. In the process of getting 3 wins in constructed, you'd get 10 gold + 1 pack for 100 gold, thus being better.
4 wins ups the average gold from 41 to 66, resulting in a somewhat better reward than constructed.
So if you're consistently getting 3 or fewer wins, no it isn't technically "worth" it.
THAT BEING SAID you really don't have to go through quite the level of devotion everyone is talking about to become a 4-win-per-run kind of guy. I put modest effort in to learning the arena to get a little over than 4 wins on average. Should I want to improve further I would need to improve significantly. I'd say the general answer to your question is, if you're only willing to put the current amount of effort in to the arena then don't bother. If you're willing to put SLIGHTLY more effort in to improving, then it's totally worth it because the 7+ wins you'll get once in a while give ridiculously great rewards.