Hearthpwn

I can share my story.  First,I'm entirely F2P with the exception of the $5 starter pack which was too good of a deal.  I started Hearthstone back in Beta when a friend said "whatever you do, don't buy packs, get them from arena".  Back when you had no collection and little gold (and back when everyone was new to arena), that made sense.  I took it to heart.  I started out averaging 3-4 wins.  Since I was only playing arena, I didn't care about my collection or ladder, so I just played arena. 

Eventually I got up into the 5 wins average by Naxx timeframe, watching Trump's arena videos back in the day really helped in that regard.  I never bought packs, and since I have limited time to play Hearthstone (played 3 or 4 arena runs a week, they take a few hours each when you get 7+ wins), I started accumulating gold.  Lots of gold, in fact.  Again, I never spent gold on packs (I did spend it on expansions), but even doing this was able to accumulate 20K gold pretty easily by WotOG.

I hit my peak arena playing between TGT and WofOG, averaging 6.2 wins per run.  Without buying packs, I still manage to get 75% of a set (usually half the epics and a quarter of the legendaries).  Then arena switched to standard and bumped up rarities of cards, and I quickly stopped playing arena.  It was less about skill and more about how lucky you were during the draft.  I think arena is better now than WotOG/MSG arena meta, but I got into constructed and haven't really gone back to arena.  I also just don't have the time to sit down for a 2 hour arena run anymore.   I now buy packs with gold, and basically try to stay around the 20K gold mark (don't know why, I just want to keep it near 20K).

So, in the end, if you're good at arena, you can do just fine in this game.  I sit at 20K gold, 40K dust, 84% of the cards in all of Hearthstone, most of the tier 1 legendaries (I will say I have been lucky in pulling the top legendaries from my packs the last two expansions), and I only spent $5 on the game.  Mainly thanks to arena.  Unfortunately, I don't think you can be as effective in arena as before since they changed it to increase rarities and spells.  Oh well.

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 Btw like the nubs saying git gud in a total rng game lelelelel

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 probably less than 100 people in the world avg 7-8 wins..

But you don't need to. If you include higher wins (that can give up to 400-500g) and dailies, along with a certain gold backup, you will never not have enough gold to get an arena run in. The "average"  to sustain endless arena is much lower than most people realize, in particular, if you have a high variance. E.g. A 0 win run costs you 150g maximum, but a 12 run gives you +200-300 net gold.

So the trick is really just "to play", if you have "mastered" the basics. HS is a very simple game in the grand scheme of things and "playing well" is far less important than "not doing mistakes". The former has a vastly lower skill ceiling than the latter.

 Also this. Particularly agree re high variance, two 10+ runs (if you roll high on the gold rewards) will give you enough for another four or five runs.

One 10wins reward will not solely finance 4-5 arena runs ... u mean the extra gold will balance the deficit from the next 4-5 bad ones so u can continuously play, right?:P

 I said two 10+ wins... Not sure why I went with that rather than one but anyway, it's accurate! You can get anywhere from 150-400 gold for 10 wins so if you get two 10-win runs and are (very) lucky you can get up to 800 gold. Of course, that never happens but it's possible! Just an example.

5 wins isn't infinite / soft infinite IMO - the gold range is 45 to 120 gold for 5 wins, if you roll 45 gold, you're not getting another 105 gold easily on a daily basis. 60 gold quest + 15 wins in ranked ? Okay... 

6 wins is more likely to be a soft infinite since gold range is 75 to 145 gold which makes it very probably to hit a quest + small handful of wins to hit your next arena ticket. 

This is assuming you play 1 arena run PER day. If you don't but you keep up with quests then you'll be stacking gold at a much lower then 6 avg. Also as mentioned above, the variance between the ranges can make lower win totals more profitable then higher win totals, but generally if you want a hard # to hit to never worry about your next ticket, it'll be 7 wins. You can sustain your 150g upcoming arena without extra effort like quests or 3 win streaks. 

Infinite is not "easy" over large sample sizes because if it was easy everyone would hit it and be raking in their gold legendaries from Arena. You can view the leaderboards for a snapshot into what volume and averages people can achieve and see whether that is obtainable for you. Although the leaderboard stats is a bit skewed since it pulls the "best" sample size for the month, my point is obtaining a handful of runs a month hitting 6-7 a run and calling it infinite doesn't have the same confidence level as someone with 100 runs at the same win rate. 

Quote from Boozor >>

5 wins isn't infinite / soft infinite IMO - the gold range is 45 to 120 gold for 5 wins, if you roll 45 gold, you're not getting another 105 gold easily on a daily basis. 60 gold quest + 15 wins in ranked ? Okay... 

6 wins is more likely to be a soft infinite since gold range is 75 to 145 gold which makes it very probably to hit a quest + small handful of wins to hit your next arena ticket. 

This is assuming you play 1 arena run PER day. If you don't but you keep up with quests then you'll be stacking gold at a much lower then 6 avg. Also as mentioned above, the variance between the ranges can make lower win totals more profitable then higher win totals, but generally if you want a hard # to hit to never worry about your next ticket, it'll be 7 wins. You can sustain your 150g upcoming arena without extra effort like quests or 3 win streaks. 

Infinite is not "easy" over large sample sizes because if it was easy everyone would hit it and be raking in their gold legendaries from Arena. You can view the leaderboards for a snapshot into what volume and averages people can achieve and see whether that is obtainable for you. Although the leaderboard stats is a bit skewed since it pulls the "best" sample size for the month, my point is obtaining a handful of runs a month hitting 6-7 a run and calling it infinite doesn't have the same confidence level as someone with 100 runs at the same win rate. 

Quote from Boozor >>

5 wins isn't infinite / soft infinite IMO - the gold range is 45 to 120 gold for 5 wins, if you roll 45 gold, you're not getting another 105 gold easily on a daily basis. 60 gold quest + 15 wins in ranked ? Okay... 

Quote from Notorious_BLT >>

Well I did say that to go 'soft-infinite' at 5 wins you can only play one Arena run every day or two. And I don't think anyone has said averaging 7+ wins is easy. It is, however, possible and achievable to be close to that with practice. 

To put it another way, I don't average 7+ wins overall but when KFT came out I spent money on packs down to 500 gold. I average slightly over an arena run every two days and play almost no ladder. Without paying any real money, I now have almost 3,000 gold so go figure.

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Quote from Boozor >>

5 wins isn't infinite / soft infinite IMO - the gold range is 45 to 120 gold for 5 wins, if you roll 45 gold, you're not getting another 105 gold easily on a daily basis. 60 gold quest + 15 wins in ranked ? Okay... 

Be careful with your math.  That is correct if you get 5 wins on arena every time.  However, if you go 10 wins and then 0 wins, your average is still 5 wins but you gain a lot more gold.  Using the average gold per win level:

2 x 5 wins = 2 x 80 = 160 gold

0 win + 10 wins = 15 + 260 gold = 275 gold

I'm not saying 5 wins is soft infinite, but it's closer than your math suggests.  The fact that arena rewards are not linear is why you can actually make a profit off of arena even if you have less than a 3 win average.

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No, it's literally just practice. The more you play arena, the better you get. With 7-8 wins per run, going infinite or near-infinite in arena is not too difficult. Getting to that point, however, takes some persistent effort and patience.

 probably less than 100 people in the world avg 7-8 wins..

Not that I don't believe your gold count - it's just the other records are foggy so might not give full representation.  But anyways, definitely possible you hit a good streak of gold boxes and your runs are much better then what are saying.  Not a big deal either way.

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Quote from VenoChron >>

No, it's literally just practice. The more you play arena, the better you get. With 7-8 wins per run, going infinite or near-infinite in arena is not too difficult. Getting to that point, however, takes some persistent effort and patience.

 probably less than 100 people in the world avg 7-8 wins..

 Statistically, 8.98% of all runs go 7+ wins.

Even if only 1 million people play arena regularly, that's still nearly 90k runs.  Pretty sure 100 people aren't doing all those runs themselves.

Real question is how does one play that much arena? I'm really good at arena... well Hearthstone in generally but Arena is so fucking boring, I usually retire just because I dont even want to play my ticket out.

Quote from DiViNE_Priest >>

Real question is how does one play that much arena? I'm really good at arena... well Hearthstone in generally but Arena is so fucking boring, I usually retire just because I dont even want to play my ticket out.

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Real question is how does one play that much arena? I'm really good at arena... well Hearthstone in generally but Arena is so fucking boring, I usually retire just because I dont even want to play my ticket out.

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I've been spending my gold on packs to get cards. Is this dumb and should I only play Arena with my gold for better reward long-term???

 Nope. Arena is a pretty poor system to gain cards, as it takes around 3-4 wins to break even and 7+ wins to get ahead. If you're a highly skilled Hearthstone player who is very knowledgable about the game and knows a lot about Arena, it can be more beneficial, but the truth is the amount of players who average 7+ wins is a very, very small amount. Even averaging 5 wins can be very difficult, which is kinda what I consider the breakpoint of it being "profitable." The truth about Arena is that if you enjoy the game mode then you should definitely practice it and play it, but if you don't enjoy it there's pretty much no reason to force yourself to play. Hearthstone's limited format is one of the least rewarding in terms of card games, and you're likely better off spending time grinding on ladder than playing Arena.

That's not really true, I linked the proposed prize table on the hearthstone wiki on this thread previously, at 3 wins (the average) the prizes are enough that it's still probably slightly worth it over buying packs.

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Quote from Excellent20 >>

I've been spending my gold on packs to get cards. Is this dumb and should I only play Arena with my gold for better reward long-term???

 Nope. Arena is a pretty poor system to gain cards, as it takes around 3-4 wins to break even and 7+ wins to get ahead. If you're a highly skilled Hearthstone player who is very knowledgable about the game and knows a lot about Arena, it can be more beneficial, but the truth is the amount of players who average 7+ wins is a very, very small amount. Even averaging 5 wins can be very difficult, which is kinda what I consider the breakpoint of it being "profitable." The truth about Arena is that if you enjoy the game mode then you should definitely practice it and play it, but if you don't enjoy it there's pretty much no reason to force yourself to play. Hearthstone's limited format is one of the least rewarding in terms of card games, and you're likely better off spending time grinding on ladder than playing Arena.

 Yes, this. If you listen to people here on these forums they'd have you believe that EVERYONE goes infinite and heck, they do it all the time its so easy to them they are just literally like Hearthstone gods that just close their eyes and see combinations and plays play out in their mind. But the reality is that according to statistics the vast majority of players average something like 2 or 3 wins in arena. And the prizes are trash for that level and not "worth it" investment wise.