Value hand RNG from discover and other effects is through the roof. You can't play around anything anymore and sometimes you build a bigger hand even if you play something every turn. This embodies exactly what is wrong:
Behold, foolish interlopers! I am commanding this mortal to spread the will of the Scourge throughout the interwebs, encouraging you to seek out me, Archlich Kel'Thuzad! Now coming to you as the tenth class of Hearthstone!
I am a finalist in this Class Creation Competition, so if you could give it a look I would be greatly appreciative <3
Having a wild arena didn't fix the class balancing issues. The arena team needs to do more drop rate balancing.
The good news is the next expansion seems to lack card generation/discover mechanics. The bad news is these cancer neutral commons Cobalt Scalebane and Bonemare.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
4x Top 150 arena player #95 June 2017 6.80, #108 Aug 2017 7.67, #127 Feb 2018 Wildfest 7.7, #33 Nov 2018 7.53
HCT Challenger Finals qualifier: 2018 Season 1, 2, 3
Doesn't matter what the drop rates are for good cards or how much value per card there is. The biggest problem with arena is going first vs going second. As long as nothing changes with that, arena will be a coinflip and that isn't fun. Classes like Hunter and Rogue are close to unbeatable going first and playing 1-2-3-4-5 cost minions in order. It's impossible to balance this in terms of cards because even Flamestrike and Blizzard only helps you clear the board that turn and you still pass priority back. The game isn't fair until after turn 10, because until that point your opponent had a 10 mana advantage over you.
Going second is just killing what your opponent plays every turn trying to survive and never getting a chance to hit them, so against high damage classes or consistent damage classes like rogue, hunter and mage, you just lose. It becomes really obvious in mirrors. You can play exactly the same cards or better than your opponent every turn and still lose. They can make play mistakes and you dont and you still lose. Your opponent has to play nothing for an entire turn in order for you to come back at any point in the game.
They need to do something for the second player. Arena, wild or standard, will always be unfair for someone otherwise.
Doesn't matter what the drop rates are for good cards or how much value per card there is. The biggest problem with arena is going first vs going second. As long as nothing changes with that, arena will be a coinflip and that isn't fun. Classes like Hunter and Rogue are close to unbeatable going first and playing 1-2-3-4-5 cost minions in order. It's impossible to balance this in terms of cards because even Flamestrike and Blizzard only helps you clear the board that turn and you still pass priority back. The game isn't fair until after turn 10, because until that point your opponent had a 10 mana advantage over you.
Going second is just killing what your opponent plays every turn trying to survive and never getting a chance to hit them, so against high damage classes or consistent damage classes like rogue, hunter and mage, you just lose. It becomes really obvious in mirrors. You can play exactly the same cards or better than your opponent every turn and still lose. They can make play mistakes and you dont and you still lose. Your opponent has to play nothing for an entire turn in order for you to come back at any point in the game.
They need to do something for the second player. Arena, wild or standard, will always be unfair for someone otherwise.
That is also true. There are SO many games where I could have easily won / lost just by going first / second respectively. The coin needs to have 2 charges that can't be used on the same turn.
Do explain. I think that's a perfectly apt description of what Un'Goro / standard did to arena.
"Jumped the shark" is the point at which something gets too stupid to keep existing. The reference being made for anyone who doesn't know is when Fonzie jumped over a shark with a motorcycle to save someone on the tv series Happy Days. After that happened it was pretty clear to the audience that the writers didn't give a shit anymore and it was over.
So I don't know if arena has jumped the shark per se, but it has reached critical levels of stupidity. This is the second or 3rd mage nerf in the same year, Vicious Fledgling is an atrocity, Spikeridged Steed is the ONLY reason paladin wins games at all and yet every one of them has 2 or 3 copies of the thing.
I don't think the devs don't care, but it feels like they have no idea what they're doing. Each set has made arena consistently worse since the Wild Rotation. Old Gods was the last time arena felt fun and more or less even for 1st and 2nd player. After that it's gone into the toilet and hasn't come out, just keeps swimming in poop.
Vicious Fledgling needs full on removing from Arena. No card should be able to win you the ENTIRE MATCH on Turn 3 if you just happen to not have an answer to hand, something that's very possible for a lot of classes.
The devs are clearly paying more attention to arena now so maybe we'll see some positive change with Throne, which looks (other than the two commons mentioned) a little less cancerous.
Decent deathrattles should make arena better. Being able to get value out of a card that isn't necessarily stronger than the last thing you played allows for back and forth and some actual decision making. More control tools could also help.
Fledgling shouldnt be any harder to kill than Raging Worgen but for some reason its harder to deal with now. I think 3/3 for 3 might be the sweet spot for minions because I keep finding that Earthen Farseers and SI:7s never die right away. Like even at 7-0 my opponent responds turn 4 with a ping. Idk if its just me or this a common thing in arena now but i think its worth exploring.
"Jumped the shark" is the point at which something gets too stupid to keep existing. The reference being made for anyone who doesn't know is when Fonzie jumped over a shark with a motorcycle to save someone on the tv series Happy Days. After that happened it was pretty clear to the audience that the writers didn't give a shit anymore and it was over.
So I don't know if arena has jumped the shark per se, but it has reached critical levels of stupidity. This is the second or 3rd mage nerf in the same year, Vicious Fledgling is an atrocity, Spikeridged Steed is the ONLY reason paladin wins games at all and yet every one of them has 2 or 3 copies of the thing.
I don't think the devs don't care, but it feels like they have no idea what they're doing. Each set has made arena consistently worse since the Wild Rotation. Old Gods was the last time arena felt fun and more or less even for 1st and 2nd player. After that it's gone into the toilet and hasn't come out, just keeps swimming in poop.
Yes, I knew that and that's exactly why I think it's an apt description of the current arena state, so I have no clue what Sneeds means.
The class balance isn't as out of whack now as when there was still an appearance bonus for Un'Goro cards. Though having said that, I've overall enjoyed Un'Goro, and as someone who purposely avoids picking the best classes, I still got my fair share of 12 wins with the less good classes. Yes, decks are too good, and it's part of the reason a lot of us try to avoid constructed, but I don't mind standard. Obviously it's super stale now since we are about to get our next expansion.
Yep It's a real problem in arena, it's even filtered through to constructed, with people's hacked off rumblings about 'discover mage', all paladin decks starting with three tirions, etc. Blizzard really need to speed up it's reaction time with this stuff. We don't want to have to wait two years for some serious balance changes. Dropping the fledgling chance by 50% doesn't cut, just look at this guy's hand...it's completely unacceptable for arena.
Doesn't matter what the drop rates are for good cards or how much value per card there is. The biggest problem with arena is going first vs going second. As long as nothing changes with that, arena will be a coinflip and that isn't fun. Classes like Hunter and Rogue are close to unbeatable going first and playing 1-2-3-4-5 cost minions in order. It's impossible to balance this in terms of cards because even Flamestrike and Blizzard only helps you clear the board that turn and you still pass priority back. The game isn't fair until after turn 10, because until that point your opponent had a 10 mana advantage over you.
Going second is just killing what your opponent plays every turn trying to survive and never getting a chance to hit them, so against high damage classes or consistent damage classes like rogue, hunter and mage, you just lose. It becomes really obvious in mirrors. You can play exactly the same cards or better than your opponent every turn and still lose. They can make play mistakes and you dont and you still lose. Your opponent has to play nothing for an entire turn in order for you to come back at any point in the game.
They need to do something for the second player. Arena, wild or standard, will always be unfair for someone otherwise.
Is going second that much of a disadvantage? My arena winrate going first is 67%, while going second is 64% - over hundreds of games I'm sure it's statistically significant at this point, but not too unreasonable. Are the global winrate differences between 1st and 2nd more pronounced?
Is going second that much of a disadvantage? My arena winrate going first is 67%, while going second is 64% - over hundreds of games I'm sure it's statistically significant at this point, but not too unreasonable. Are the global winrate differences between 1st and 2nd more pronounced?
Value hand RNG from discover and other effects is through the roof. You can't play around anything anymore and sometimes you build a bigger hand even if you play something every turn. This embodies exactly what is wrong:
In case you are wondering, I had no Prince Malchezaar.
I want a Wild arena option and I want it now goddammit!
Pretty soon, it'll jump the Bearshark :^)
Behold, foolish interlopers! I am commanding this mortal to spread the will of the Scourge throughout the interwebs, encouraging you to seek out me, Archlich Kel'Thuzad! Now coming to you as the tenth class of Hearthstone!
I am a finalist in this Class Creation Competition, so if you could give it a look I would be greatly appreciative <3
Having a wild arena didn't fix the class balancing issues. The arena team needs to do more drop rate balancing.
The good news is the next expansion seems to lack card generation/discover mechanics. The bad news is these cancer neutral commons Cobalt Scalebane and Bonemare.
4x Top 150 arena player
#95 June 2017 6.80, #108 Aug 2017 7.67, #127 Feb 2018 Wildfest 7.7, #33 Nov 2018 7.53
HCT Challenger Finals qualifier: 2018 Season 1, 2, 3
Doesn't matter what the drop rates are for good cards or how much value per card there is. The biggest problem with arena is going first vs going second. As long as nothing changes with that, arena will be a coinflip and that isn't fun. Classes like Hunter and Rogue are close to unbeatable going first and playing 1-2-3-4-5 cost minions in order. It's impossible to balance this in terms of cards because even Flamestrike and Blizzard only helps you clear the board that turn and you still pass priority back. The game isn't fair until after turn 10, because until that point your opponent had a 10 mana advantage over you.
Going second is just killing what your opponent plays every turn trying to survive and never getting a chance to hit them, so against high damage classes or consistent damage classes like rogue, hunter and mage, you just lose. It becomes really obvious in mirrors. You can play exactly the same cards or better than your opponent every turn and still lose. They can make play mistakes and you dont and you still lose. Your opponent has to play nothing for an entire turn in order for you to come back at any point in the game.
They need to do something for the second player. Arena, wild or standard, will always be unfair for someone otherwise.
that's not what "jumped the shark" means
Vvreeeew.
Vicious Fledgling needs full on removing from Arena. No card should be able to win you the ENTIRE MATCH on Turn 3 if you just happen to not have an answer to hand, something that's very possible for a lot of classes.
The devs are clearly paying more attention to arena now so maybe we'll see some positive change with Throne, which looks (other than the two commons mentioned) a little less cancerous.
Decent deathrattles should make arena better. Being able to get value out of a card that isn't necessarily stronger than the last thing you played allows for back and forth and some actual decision making. More control tools could also help.
Fledgling shouldnt be any harder to kill than Raging Worgen but for some reason its harder to deal with now. I think 3/3 for 3 might be the sweet spot for minions because I keep finding that Earthen Farseers and SI:7s never die right away. Like even at 7-0 my opponent responds turn 4 with a ping. Idk if its just me or this a common thing in arena now but i think its worth exploring.
The class balance isn't as out of whack now as when there was still an appearance bonus for Un'Goro cards. Though having said that, I've overall enjoyed Un'Goro, and as someone who purposely avoids picking the best classes, I still got my fair share of 12 wins with the less good classes. Yes, decks are too good, and it's part of the reason a lot of us try to avoid constructed, but I don't mind standard. Obviously it's super stale now since we are about to get our next expansion.
Yep It's a real problem in arena, it's even filtered through to constructed, with people's hacked off rumblings about 'discover mage', all paladin decks starting with three tirions, etc. Blizzard really need to speed up it's reaction time with this stuff. We don't want to have to wait two years for some serious balance changes. Dropping the fledgling chance by 50% doesn't cut, just look at this guy's hand...it's completely unacceptable for arena.