Normally when an expansion drops, I go on a bit of a pack-ripping frenzy and drop most of my gold on packs in one go to open and start my collection of the new expansion. But once all the packs and the corresponding dust) are done, there's this period of not knowing how to get those extra cards.
So I was wondering whether others have tried (or still do) heading for the Arena for the first few weeks of the new set or not. Do you find you get more packs and still get a chance to enjoy the new cards etc?
Do you prefer Arena , so as to avoid the common influx of irritating aggro decks that tryhard against players who are just wanting to experiment with the new cards?
Does the slightly pricier gold cost make it less worth it and not very efficient? Wanted some thoughts on the idea, basically.
Well, I guess if you're good at arena, and you have tons of time, and you don't hate arena, then it's great. However, for every person that gets enough wins to break even or better, someone has to be losing. I like ranked, so I'd rather spend my time there, so I'll take the packs. It takes less time to complete a quest than to play arena, and I rarely ever do better than a few wins. You can still pick up gold playing ranked anyway. So up to you.
leave about 500 gold arena and expend the rest buying packs, go for arena until the meta settles in, complete the pity timer, craft what i want(need) and then i save for the next expasion
Depends on (A) how you approach the game, (B) how much resources you have, (C) your patience and (D) how good you are at Arena (or if you're willing to invest time into learning it).
(A) If you really love opening new packs, messing around with all the new stuff and that's what will make you happy - then you might wanna go for it.
(B) If you got enough gold and dust saved up to allow yourself comfortable level of the experience described in (A), then once again, you might consider opening packs straight away. You can always leave a small amount of gold to allow yourself to cycle through Arena to get more packs after, or simply weave in a run or two here and there. I, personally, don't see the point in opening 20-ish packs and crafting a legendary or two to just have one deck that I'm not sure will even still be in the meta in two weeks time.
(C) If you are patient, then it is definitely more worthwhile to invest your gold in Arena. That depends on your feelings towards it, though. No point playing the game "efficiently" if you hate every minute of your experience. I'm currently coming back into the game, and I've been farming up Arena for quite some time already. I've got enough gold and dust saved up, but even then I'm going to play Arena for a couple of weeks to get additional packs and wait to see which decks/cards show promise so I can make educated crafting decisions.
(D) If you don't want to be playing Arena or can't be bothered investing time into getting the desired level of efficiency there, then it would probably not be the best way to spend your playing time / gold / missing out on the extravaganza.
It's all about your spare time and what you find fun. I always enjoyed Arena, so it' always been a stepping stone for building up my collection.
Spend most of your gold on packs, but leave a little bit for arena. How much depends on your average winrate, with 5-6 wins your gold will roughly stay the same if you do one arena run per day (including the daily quest), so there's no need to save much.
At the start of a new expansion, I usually test a couple decks in ranked but it gets boring very quickly once everyone starts running the same lists. After a couple days or at the latest after a week I get back to Arena. Arena is especially profitable for experienced players at the start of an expansion because newer players often do not evaluate cards correctly. The veterans on the other hand (for the most part) will have a pretty good idea how the meta is going to look like and take advantage of that fact. There will also be more (inexperienced) players who play arena to earn their cards for constructed, so opponents are generally easier during that time.
Arena is the most efficient mode in HS, if you're good you earn like 5-7 times more in comparison with ranked in the same amount of time. Unless you absolutely hate that mode you should definitely farm your cards there (as a f2p or as someone who doesn't want to drop a ton of cash on new expansions)
Arena is not that reliable, you need i think if i remember correct seven wins to break even(?), so unless you're incredibly lucky i'd shy away from it if i were you.
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Those who are given more in life, must not cling to it, but risk it all at every moment!
3 wins nets you a pack and between 30-50g and about 25-30 dust. It's pretty much the same as buying the pack. 7 wins or more only if you plan to go infinite.
Also, another strong consideration is time. Even 3 wins and 3 losses, with an average time of 10 min per game will be 1 hour of arena. Put 7+ victories (and 3 losses) at around 2h or more. That's a lot of time for a pack. Now multiply that for 10,20, 30 or more packs and it can become a part time job, specially if you're in just for the packs not for the arena itself.
I did this for Boomsday and after ~15 arena runs I was pretty bored of it and just bought the rest of the packs I wanted. And that's because I managed to make a profit over those ~15 runs.
Or you can just buy the packs, go to Casual and try things, even making some gold back with the 3 wins/10g.
Arena is not that reliable, you need i think if i remember correct seven wins to break even(?), so unless you're incredibly lucky i'd shy away from it if i were you.
7 wins allows one to go infinite, meaning you get at least 150 gold + a pack. If you reach 3 wins you break even, meaning at least 50 gold + a pack that is worth 100 gold. So just consider if you reach 3+ average if the time-investment of playing arena is worth it to get the little bit of extra gold instead of buying the packs outright.
I personally love playing arena and have always had around a 6+ win average, more recently am somehow managing to have 7+ average. I end up playing more to collect the cards rather than to actually use them in standard as I often don't enjoy it as much as arena. Standard gets stale pretty quickly for me. Same decks all the time, so yeah, I'm pretty biased :p
Well, my average is usually approximately 7-9 wins. I've 12-ed a few times but that's rare. It sounds like saving an arena "pot" might be the way to go - get the best of both worlds, etc, while still keeping the opportunity to go infinite for the stuff I still need after.
A few things, some of which was said already, some new:
1. At 3 wins you just about break even (technically off about 10 gold), so if you average about 3 wins or more then you earn more playing arena than buying packs.
2. Crafting cards less than 2 weeks after the expansion is a VERY risky bet, especially when going F2P. Chances are, you will NOT get the epics/legendaries you need for specific decks you want to play and will use your dust to cover them. But we're pretty bad at judging cards even after we have them. MANY bad legendaries were deemed must crafts at first. Usually by 2 weeks we get a good estimate of which cards are good, which are bad, which are fun and which just suck.
Point is, it's safest to NOT craft cards right after an expansion. Which means chances are after you open your packs you won't be able to set up the decks you may want to do without major holes.
3. Whizbang exists now. you can literally play most of the new cards and starting deck ideas by just running this guy.
Overall:
I recommend focusing on Arena unless you are BAD at it (and note a 50% win rate nets you 3 wins on average which is enough) or just hate it.
Don't craft anything for 1-2 weeks and let the hype give way to real analysis.
If you don't have Whizbang. GET WHIZBANG. If you want to play constructed, play him. He'll keep you from crafting too early and you get to try out a lot of the cards to see if you liked them.
Well, my average is usually approximately 7-9 wins. I've 12-ed a few times but that's rare. It sounds like saving an arena "pot" might be the way to go - get the best of both worlds, etc, while still keeping the opportunity to go infinite for the stuff I still need after.
Well, you're among the best if not the best arena player in the world then, congrats. Playing arena should be a nobrainer in that case.
If you average 7-9 then Arena is absolutely the way to go (given you enjoy playing it). You don't even need to save up funds for it. The gold you get from a daily quest combined with rewards you get from that average will be more than enough to allow you to keep playing and accumulating packs without any worries at a very steady pace and with huge value payout.
It's the most efficient way to go. Given you're capable of a pretty high average it's just a matter of how you want to play and enjoy the game. After playing Constructed for the first couple of weeks it'll be pretty easy for you to go back to the Arena and continue building your collection from there.
Well, my average is usually approximately 7-9 wins. I've 12-ed a few times but that's rare. It sounds like saving an arena "pot" might be the way to go - get the best of both worlds, etc, while still keeping the opportunity to go infinite for the stuff I still need after.
Well, you're among the best if not the best arena player in the world then, congrats. Playing arena should be a nobrainer in that case.
But why would he need to save gold then? Infinite arena players like him need 150 gold (few hundreds for a bad luck insurance) :))
Well, my average is usually approximately 7-9 wins. I've 12-ed a few times but that's rare. It sounds like saving an arena "pot" might be the way to go - get the best of both worlds, etc, while still keeping the opportunity to go infinite for the stuff I still need after.
Well, you're among the best if not the best arena player in the world then, congrats. Playing arena should be a nobrainer in that case.
Not sure why you think that. I've seen players with much better averages than me. (And there are some players who consistently get 12 wins regularly) In any case, I still get plenty of bad runs with just 2-4 wins, same as everyone else. I would assume you were being sarcastic, but since I made a fairly average claim about my ability, it seems a bit redundant to be sarcastic about that. Maybe salty?
I average just under 5 wins (4.85) and I have tried both.
For me the Arena expierience is actually better than constructed the first 2 weeks. You get to play around with new cards plenty enough and you pick cards you wouldn't use in constructed, making the pool bigger. It takes longer to play around with everything though. It will take you weeks what in constructed you do in days. (and no: I won't own all the cards in constructed, I have a respectable 3k gold ready for Rastakhan) Also the arena meta feels fresher than the one in constructed.
The real difference for me is the level playing field though. In constructed people who don't have a lot of gold will play their old decks with maybe up to 5 new cards to test out. These optimalized decks (with 5 cards un-optimalizing it a bit usually) have a huge advantage over your homebrewn trying-to-live-the-dream deck usually.
I will pay 1k gold on packs and will spend 2k on Arena. Like I did on Boomsday felt it was the best way for me.
Well, my average is usually approximately 7-9 wins. I've 12-ed a few times but that's rare. It sounds like saving an arena "pot" might be the way to go - get the best of both worlds, etc, while still keeping the opportunity to go infinite for the stuff I still need after.
Well, you're among the best if not the best arena player in the world then, congrats. Playing arena should be a nobrainer in that case.
Not sure why you think that. I've seen players with much better averages than me. (And there are some players who consistently get 12 wins regularly) In any case, I still get plenty of bad runs with just 2-4 wins, same as everyone else. I would assume you were being sarcastic, but since I made a fairly average claim about my ability, it seems a bit redundant to be sarcastic about that. Maybe salty?
I'm not sure you understand what average means in that case, it does not mean "I occasionally get 7-9 win runs". If you get a couple of bad runs that will hurt your average quite significantly. Even for extremely good arena players it is very difficult to maintain a 7 win average over several months (the leaderboard doesn't reflect your true average as it picks your best 30 in a sequence), Kripp is around 6.7 btw. in a year.
So I was actually only partially sarcastic when I said above statement because a 8-9 win average e.g. is close to impossible in arena and if you truly had such an average, you would indeed be the best arena player in the world.
Well, my average is usually approximately 7-9 wins. I've 12-ed a few times but that's rare. It sounds like saving an arena "pot" might be the way to go - get the best of both worlds, etc, while still keeping the opportunity to go infinite for the stuff I still need after.
Well, you're among the best if not the best arena player in the world then, congrats. Playing arena should be a nobrainer in that case.
Not sure why you think that. I've seen players with much better averages than me. (And there are some players who consistently get 12 wins regularly) In any case, I still get plenty of bad runs with just 2-4 wins, same as everyone else. I would assume you were being sarcastic, but since I made a fairly average claim about my ability, it seems a bit redundant to be sarcastic about that. Maybe salty?
I'm not sure you understand what average means in that case, it does not mean "I occasionally get 7-9 win runs". If you get a couple of bad runs that will hurt your average quite significantly. Even for extremely good arena players it is very difficult to maintain a 7 win average over several months (the leaderboard doesn't reflect your true average as it picks your best 30 in a sequence), Kripp is around 6.7 btw. in a year.
So I was actually only partially sarcastic when I said above statement because a 8-9 win average e.g. is close to impossible in arena and if you truly had such an average, you would indeed be the best arena player in the world.
Your average SHOULD mean you track all your arena runs in something like Heatharena or whatever (it's what I do, you can check at Heatharena). 7-9 is clearly not an average since it's 2 wins difference! He's just guessing I think and players usually think they're way better than they actually are. Just ignore his claim and move on <3
im an infinite arena player but contrary to what most people advise i tend to play tons of constructed after a new expansion hits, because that is when constructed is the most enjoyable for me.
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Normally when an expansion drops, I go on a bit of a pack-ripping frenzy and drop most of my gold on packs in one go to open and start my collection of the new expansion.
But once all the packs and the corresponding dust) are done, there's this period of not knowing how to get those extra cards.
So I was wondering whether others have tried (or still do) heading for the Arena for the first few weeks of the new set or not.
Do you find you get more packs and still get a chance to enjoy the new cards etc?
Do you prefer Arena , so as to avoid the common influx of irritating aggro decks that tryhard against players who are just wanting to experiment with the new cards?
Does the slightly pricier gold cost make it less worth it and not very efficient?
Wanted some thoughts on the idea, basically.
I'm spending gold for about two months after the expansion drops and then start to save for the new one - always buying pre-orders as well.
Usually being able to have/craft 70% of what I want to play.
Well, I guess if you're good at arena, and you have tons of time, and you don't hate arena, then it's great. However, for every person that gets enough wins to break even or better, someone has to be losing. I like ranked, so I'd rather spend my time there, so I'll take the packs. It takes less time to complete a quest than to play arena, and I rarely ever do better than a few wins. You can still pick up gold playing ranked anyway. So up to you.
leave about 500 gold arena and expend the rest buying packs, go for arena until the meta settles in, complete the pity timer, craft what i want(need) and then i save for the next expasion
Depends on (A) how you approach the game, (B) how much resources you have, (C) your patience and (D) how good you are at Arena (or if you're willing to invest time into learning it).
(A) If you really love opening new packs, messing around with all the new stuff and that's what will make you happy - then you might wanna go for it.
(B) If you got enough gold and dust saved up to allow yourself comfortable level of the experience described in (A), then once again, you might consider opening packs straight away. You can always leave a small amount of gold to allow yourself to cycle through Arena to get more packs after, or simply weave in a run or two here and there. I, personally, don't see the point in opening 20-ish packs and crafting a legendary or two to just have one deck that I'm not sure will even still be in the meta in two weeks time.
(C) If you are patient, then it is definitely more worthwhile to invest your gold in Arena. That depends on your feelings towards it, though. No point playing the game "efficiently" if you hate every minute of your experience. I'm currently coming back into the game, and I've been farming up Arena for quite some time already. I've got enough gold and dust saved up, but even then I'm going to play Arena for a couple of weeks to get additional packs and wait to see which decks/cards show promise so I can make educated crafting decisions.
(D) If you don't want to be playing Arena or can't be bothered investing time into getting the desired level of efficiency there, then it would probably not be the best way to spend your playing time / gold / missing out on the extravaganza.
It's all about your spare time and what you find fun. I always enjoyed Arena, so it' always been a stepping stone for building up my collection.
Spend most of your gold on packs, but leave a little bit for arena. How much depends on your average winrate, with 5-6 wins your gold will roughly stay the same if you do one arena run per day (including the daily quest), so there's no need to save much.
At the start of a new expansion, I usually test a couple decks in ranked but it gets boring very quickly once everyone starts running the same lists. After a couple days or at the latest after a week I get back to Arena. Arena is especially profitable for experienced players at the start of an expansion because newer players often do not evaluate cards correctly. The veterans on the other hand (for the most part) will have a pretty good idea how the meta is going to look like and take advantage of that fact. There will also be more (inexperienced) players who play arena to earn their cards for constructed, so opponents are generally easier during that time.
Arena is the most efficient mode in HS, if you're good you earn like 5-7 times more in comparison with ranked in the same amount of time. Unless you absolutely hate that mode you should definitely farm your cards there (as a f2p or as someone who doesn't want to drop a ton of cash on new expansions)
Arena EU Leaderboard
Arena is not that reliable, you need i think if i remember correct seven wins to break even(?), so unless you're incredibly lucky i'd shy away from it if i were you.
Those who are given more in life, must not cling to it, but risk it all at every moment!
500g for arena is enough rest for the paks
3 wins nets you a pack and between 30-50g and about 25-30 dust. It's pretty much the same as buying the pack. 7 wins or more only if you plan to go infinite.
Also, another strong consideration is time. Even 3 wins and 3 losses, with an average time of 10 min per game will be 1 hour of arena. Put 7+ victories (and 3 losses) at around 2h or more. That's a lot of time for a pack. Now multiply that for 10,20, 30 or more packs and it can become a part time job, specially if you're in just for the packs not for the arena itself.
I did this for Boomsday and after ~15 arena runs I was pretty bored of it and just bought the rest of the packs I wanted. And that's because I managed to make a profit over those ~15 runs.
Or you can just buy the packs, go to Casual and try things, even making some gold back with the 3 wins/10g.
7 wins allows one to go infinite, meaning you get at least 150 gold + a pack. If you reach 3 wins you break even, meaning at least 50 gold + a pack that is worth 100 gold. So just consider if you reach 3+ average if the time-investment of playing arena is worth it to get the little bit of extra gold instead of buying the packs outright.
I personally love playing arena and have always had around a 6+ win average, more recently am somehow managing to have 7+ average. I end up playing more to collect the cards rather than to actually use them in standard as I often don't enjoy it as much as arena. Standard gets stale pretty quickly for me. Same decks all the time, so yeah, I'm pretty biased :p
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Well, my average is usually approximately 7-9 wins. I've 12-ed a few times but that's rare.
It sounds like saving an arena "pot" might be the way to go - get the best of both worlds, etc, while still keeping the opportunity to go infinite for the stuff I still need after.
A few things, some of which was said already, some new:
1. At 3 wins you just about break even (technically off about 10 gold), so if you average about 3 wins or more then you earn more playing arena than buying packs.
2. Crafting cards less than 2 weeks after the expansion is a VERY risky bet, especially when going F2P. Chances are, you will NOT get the epics/legendaries you need for specific decks you want to play and will use your dust to cover them. But we're pretty bad at judging cards even after we have them. MANY bad legendaries were deemed must crafts at first. Usually by 2 weeks we get a good estimate of which cards are good, which are bad, which are fun and which just suck.
Point is, it's safest to NOT craft cards right after an expansion. Which means chances are after you open your packs you won't be able to set up the decks you may want to do without major holes.
3. Whizbang exists now. you can literally play most of the new cards and starting deck ideas by just running this guy.
Overall:
I recommend focusing on Arena unless you are BAD at it (and note a 50% win rate nets you 3 wins on average which is enough) or just hate it.
Don't craft anything for 1-2 weeks and let the hype give way to real analysis.
If you don't have Whizbang. GET WHIZBANG. If you want to play constructed, play him. He'll keep you from crafting too early and you get to try out a lot of the cards to see if you liked them.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
Well, you're among the best if not the best arena player in the world then, congrats. Playing arena should be a nobrainer in that case.
Arena EU Leaderboard
If you average 7-9 then Arena is absolutely the way to go (given you enjoy playing it). You don't even need to save up funds for it. The gold you get from a daily quest combined with rewards you get from that average will be more than enough to allow you to keep playing and accumulating packs without any worries at a very steady pace and with huge value payout.
It's the most efficient way to go. Given you're capable of a pretty high average it's just a matter of how you want to play and enjoy the game. After playing Constructed for the first couple of weeks it'll be pretty easy for you to go back to the Arena and continue building your collection from there.
But why would he need to save gold then? Infinite arena players like him need 150 gold (few hundreds for a bad luck insurance) :))
Not sure why you think that. I've seen players with much better averages than me. (And there are some players who consistently get 12 wins regularly)
In any case, I still get plenty of bad runs with just 2-4 wins, same as everyone else.
I would assume you were being sarcastic, but since I made a fairly average claim about my ability, it seems a bit redundant to be sarcastic about that. Maybe salty?
I average just under 5 wins (4.85) and I have tried both.
For me the Arena expierience is actually better than constructed the first 2 weeks. You get to play around with new cards plenty enough and you pick cards you wouldn't use in constructed, making the pool bigger. It takes longer to play around with everything though. It will take you weeks what in constructed you do in days. (and no: I won't own all the cards in constructed, I have a respectable 3k gold ready for Rastakhan)
Also the arena meta feels fresher than the one in constructed.
The real difference for me is the level playing field though. In constructed people who don't have a lot of gold will play their old decks with maybe up to 5 new cards to test out. These optimalized decks (with 5 cards un-optimalizing it a bit usually) have a huge advantage over your homebrewn trying-to-live-the-dream deck usually.
I will pay 1k gold on packs and will spend 2k on Arena. Like I did on Boomsday felt it was the best way for me.
I'm not sure you understand what average means in that case, it does not mean "I occasionally get 7-9 win runs". If you get a couple of bad runs that will hurt your average quite significantly. Even for extremely good arena players it is very difficult to maintain a 7 win average over several months (the leaderboard doesn't reflect your true average as it picks your best 30 in a sequence), Kripp is around 6.7 btw. in a year.
So I was actually only partially sarcastic when I said above statement because a 8-9 win average e.g. is close to impossible in arena and if you truly had such an average, you would indeed be the best arena player in the world.
Arena EU Leaderboard
Your average SHOULD mean you track all your arena runs in something like Heatharena or whatever (it's what I do, you can check at Heatharena). 7-9 is clearly not an average since it's 2 wins difference! He's just guessing I think and players usually think they're way better than they actually are. Just ignore his claim and move on <3
im an infinite arena player but contrary to what most people advise i tend to play tons of constructed after a new expansion hits, because that is when constructed is the most enjoyable for me.