Hearthpwn

I like it to be honest.  It has really shaken it up and made it so decks genuinely feel different to each other.  You go up against a Shaman and it could be a Jade Shaman or an Aggro Shaman or a Control Shaman and it is possible to draft any of those decks and they look and play really different to each other and this is the same with any class.  Oh sure, before the patch you had decks that were more aggro and others that were more greedy, but ultimately they were still just trying to curve out and then hope for the best.  Now playing slower and controlling the board is a genuine option with most classes.

Could the novelty wear off?  Sure but I'm having a lot of fun with it right now and my win rate is still pretty much the same (around 5).

New arena is not fun. This requires so little skill compared to old arena that it is absolutely ridiculous. If you are one saying that skilled players do better in this arena, you are one of the unskilled players using an insane deck to steamroll good players with bad decks... while you BM and think you did something worthwhile. You're actually bad and we see all your misplays while you're repeatedly hitting us in the face because we don't have any cards to play. Your drafting LUCK is NOT equal to your playing SKILL. 

They say they added spells so a player can catch up when behind... all I ever see are people winning more with them. They build a board and destroy the others in the same turn. You can't play around it when you have nothing to play around it with. 

The draft system is absolutely broken. Sure, I must have terrible luck that in 30+ drafts, I've yet to get anywhere near the quality of my 90% of my opponent's (and this is probably also a failure in matchmaking maybe because I have a good MMR from old arena?)... but that shouldn't even be possible in a good drafting system. It never happened in old arena. The range of deck quality was much smaller, making SKILL important. There were no terrible decks, no amazing decks, just arena decks. We all had garbage (+/- a few good cards) and generally whoever made it work best, won. 

Now it's just painful to play when you don't get good offerings. If you've not received a bad draft yet, then you don't know, so don't try to say new arena is great and you're just better than everyone... say you're lucky. There are many of us complaining about this and we get written off as 'unskilled' - which is hilarious and just shows that the person saying it is one of these mediocre-to-terrible players that stomps with a good deck and gets a big head about it.


(Side note: I don't want to put on the tinfoil hat, but it seems like there's got to be a reason that the best decks I see are always piloted by the worst players (even to the point of hovering over every card like they haven't seen it before)... and I'm a whale that's played since launch yet I can't get good draft offerings...)

EDIT: I guess my bit about MMR doesn't make sense as Blizz has only ever stated that MMR doesn't involve decks... but... you know... that's another tinfoil hat tea party discussion for another day. :) 

I also realize I've mixed up some forum threads, this one is much more leaning towards people on the same page as me. The other ones are full of people saying we're just bad players if we're losing to insane decks. So, just apply this to those people. Those that agree, just revel in the salt with me. :)

I'll just add today's arena run here to further solidify my above post. I draft Priest because I want to get a taste of that sweet victory that half of this thread gets to feel when they play. I get zero removal. Zero AOE. 1 Talonpriest (that I never drew). Only 2x potion of madness and 1 Drakonid Crusher, the rest was garbage. 

First match, Shaman with maelstrom portal + lightning bolt + lava shock + lava burst + 2x drak crushers + all the standard good early game minions. My minions never even got to attack. Game was over around turn 7, I guess, since he dropped 2x crushers before I conceded. 

Second match, Hunter with full beast synergy, completely curved out. I started the match with Mistress of Mixtures. He had SunFury Protector, so I never caught up since I had no spells or minions with equal/better stats than his. The few minions I did drop, he ignored and just hit my face. I died around turn 6-7 again.

The above is my average arena experience these days. If you tell me this has anything to do with skill, you are completely retarded.

Quote from xBroMontana >>

I'll just add today's arena run here to further solidify my above post. I draft Priest because I want to get a taste of that sweet victory that half of this thread gets to feel when they play. I get zero removal. Zero AOE. 1 Talonpriest (that I never drew). Only 2x potion of madness and 1 Drakonid Crusher, the rest was garbage. 

First match, Shaman with maelstrom portal + lightning bolt + lava shock + lava burst + 2x drak crushers + all the standard good early game minions. My minions never even got to attack. Game was over around turn 7, I guess, since he dropped 2x crushers before I conceded. 

Second match, Hunter with full beast synergy, completely curved out. I started the match with Mistress of Mixtures. He had SunFury Protector, so I never caught up since I had no spells or minions with equal/better stats than his. The few minions I did drop, he ignored and just hit my face. I died around turn 6-7 again.

The above is my average arena experience these days. If you tell me this has anything to do with skill, you are completely retarded.

I agree, I used to average 6-7 wins and now I average about 4. Three drafts in a row I got offered less than 5 two-drops. 

Actually to make a point specifically to winrates - the global winrate stays the same regardless of what they do in arena, it's always 50% (obviously). If your personal winrate drops down that inevitably means that the winrate of another player has gone up - basically, again, there's nothing wrong with arena intrinsically but it has changed and it's your ability to adapt to that change that'll determine your new winrate. 

It's fine to dislike the new drafting style, but to claim it's imbalanced or unfair in any way is quite simply incorrect.

So much rage!  LOL

you are so bad in mat   "the global winrate stays the same regardless of what they do in arena, it's always 50% (obviously) " ; the average win rate is less then 4 wins ... easy to know if you are correct or not for the rest ^^

Quote from jbagels1 >>

I agree, I used to average 6-7 wins and now I average about 4. Three drafts in a row I got offered less than 5 two-drops. 

I was just coming here to complain about this.  I have been here since beta, and I have only ever had one real issue with any aspect of the game (emotes drive me crazy), but the new drafting system has massively reduced the amount of fun I am having.

I agree with some posters in this thread that the skill aspect of arena does not appear to be as much of a factor as it used to be.  I have not done research to prove that my winrate has dropped, but im sure it has (old winrate was 5.1 over 100 sessions, stopped tracking a while ago) Sure, its still skill dependent, i would guess my average winrate is 4 wins, maybe even 4.5.  However, this isnt my real concern here, although it is tangentially related.

The issue here is not the move to standard.  The issue is the much higher rate of legendaries in arena.  The arena meta has moved from midrange/face to a control aspect (which is totally fine, although im sure some people complain about it).  The issue is that in a control meta, great legendaries such as deathwing, ragnaros, sylvanas, etc can just win games outright no matter how poorly you play.

I would say maybe 1 in 5 games are simply decided by a legendary which you may simply not have an answer for (sometimes its my legendary, sometimes its theirs, sure, its "fair"). The legendaries are so strong right now that I keep deathwing in my starting hand, because I probably win 90%+ when I have that card! (this would be an example of a skill aspect which raises my winrate, so, yes, skill is certainly still an aspect).  If 20% of games are decided with a very very low skill aspect, this will reduce the overall skill aspect even if the other 80% play out as they used to.

The bottom line is a single card being drawn simply deciding the game is neither fun nor interesting, whether I draw it or they do.  If you get one of those cards, you build your deck around drawing the game out long enough that you can pull it.  This gameplay style is boring rote flawed gameplay.

I don't even mind the increase in legendaries.  The biggest problem is the ease at which power cards are given to some players.  Good luck beating the priests with 4x Talon Priests, 3x Operatives, 3x Historians, 2x Potion of Madness, and 3x Dragonfire Potions.  Such cards are not only crazy strong but good luck playing around.

One of the biggest problems is that now you almost cannot even play around anything or make reasoned guesses about what the opponent likely has.  In the past you could make reasonable moves based upon how likely the opponent had certain cards of varying rarities.  Now you almost just have to cross your fingers and pray since they could have almost anything and almost any number of those cards.

The decks continue to remain beyond Ridiculous.

 At 1-1 Face a Priest with Turn 1 Elemental, Turn 2 Elemental, Turn 3 Elemental, Turn 4 Elemental, Turn 6 Elemental, Turn 7 Blazecaller, Turn 8 Blazecaller.

At 2-2 face a Mage with 2x Blizzard, 2x Fireball, Polymorph, and Cabalists Tomb.

yea i also liked the old arena more but for some reason my winrate had gone up by alot so im fine with it 

its not true that people dont get gigh wins anymore but i actually got more wins then ever in the last month and as a f2p player im griding some cards but the prizes did went down so its anoyying