So what are your first impressions with Rise of Shadows arena? Do you like the old sets back? What cards are beating your ass?
Also, Blizzard just released the current Arena Rules together with a spreadsheet containing the buckets.
I did one 3-3 Shaman run (with rather shitty deck) and one 11-3 WL run (with two Abyssal Enforcers that did carry quite hard). I know this is a super small sample size, but this is what iv gathered so far:
Surprisingly iv met quite a lot of Hunters and all of them had 2+ Scavenging Hyenas with tons of beasts to feed them.
Proud Defender and Dalaran Crusader are probably the cards iv met the most often that performed outstandingly in every situation. Much to their expectation.
Hagatha's Scheme is very much a real threat from any shaman deck.
Rogues raign supreme with the tempo game, as expected.
Jades are thankfully not as consistent, at least from what iv seen (rogue, shaman).
Mage RNGs the shit out of everything again.
Not many AOEs around, even in higher ranks.
Ppl gravitated towards more value oriented drafts, except for rogues and hunters.
Underbelly Fence underwhelms. Not getting buffed on curve, so getting eaten by anything and everything later. Also, even with treble burglar, double huckster, and a fox, I'm ending up with no cards from another class by turn 9 sometimes. Yay.
Hench-Clan Burglar is surprisingly bad. The amount of abysmal spells means it's basically vanilla. Woo.
Legendaries are everywhere. 2 games, one Y'sharrj, one Khadgar into power of creation. Yeah, I'll just deal with four 4/2 diving shield charge...
Either you're hyper-aggressive, and decks with five >4 mana cards are too slow, or you have 5+ good boardwipes.
This is shaping up to be another abysmal "Don't get a good legendary? Don't bother." tripefest, with the added bonus of basically being "who's faster, unless someone got lots of AE". Not seeing myself playing much arena again here.
I'm currently only 2-0 with Priest but I have a feeling that this class is going to be really powerful for the next 2 months. So many cheap removals and high stats early minions.
Honestly, i've only played one match and went 3-3 with Mage with a 64 point deck but I had a lot of fun doing it. When I played I noticed that pretty much everyone I saw had at least one legendary and one Warlock even played Arch-Villain Rafaam on curve into Prophet Velen, White Eyes, Soggoth the Slitherer, Emeriss, and Ysera so that kinda made quit in a violent rage.
1st win was due to massive missplay by my opponent who didn't know how conjurer's calling works, therefore destroying my proud defender into polluted hoarder and aberrant berserker.
1nd win was steamrolling my opponent with underbelly angler and nightmare amalgam and producing constructed ammount of murlocs.
Losses were also due to my opponent steamrolling me (1 hunter especially has constructed hand with hyenas and other beasts O_O).
From this one run, I believe that we will be seeing semi-constructed decks, but I may be wrong.
My first run was 8:3 Rogue Run. Tempo works very well. Started another Rogue run, that one performs poorly (currently at 4:2), although it contains two EVIL Miscreant which are according to HSReplay one of the best performing Arena cards right now. That second deck has less card discover, so run out of cards occasionally.
My first run was 8:3 Rogue Run. Tempo works very well. Started another Rogue run, that one performs poorly (currently at 4:2), although it contains two EVIL Miscreant which are according to HSReplay one of the best performing Arena cards right now. That second deck has less card discover, so run out of cards occasionally.
4:2 is good ATM for tempo, in my experience. Arena is full of huge swingy legendaries and boardwipes, though I was often <5 damage away in my last run (1:3), so maybe it was picking what looked like good cards that actually bombed (things like the fence being mediocre, and the burglar being bad, because often enough all three choices were turd-quality) that was the issue, paired with scarcity of reach.
went 10-3 with warlock first run - flame imp on 1, aoe (abyssal enforcers) felt v. powerful I played against a mage with 3 flamestrikes and a couple games where opponents had all the answers to lose
I think shadequill is relatively strong, but it's done nothing so far for me, because high value legendaries are pretty hard to beat (oh, look, I'm 1-1, and the opp's dropping in geddon. That's hard to beat when I needed to burn a MC on something decently-sized in the late midgame to not lose my board entirely). Defias Cleaner should be good, though, again, done little because of the sheer stupidity of decks. Potion of madness has been utter trash, surprisingly - no real targets most of the time. Daring reporter is okay, but outclassed by top-quality stuff.
Portal keeper did a surprising amount of work for my opp, though that was more RNG than anything else. Unleash the beast is HUGE value in a slower hunter draft.
Big minions seem to be the meta today, there is very few hard removal. Especially stupid derranged doctor,which is not a very good card, is in every other deck and it just works lol.
They need to drastically lower the power level of the decks. Get a few wins and almost every opponent has like 4+ Evil Miscreants, 2+ Abyssal Enforcers, etc
Rogue is as dominant as i figured they would be, being the top 2. Most of my high win games is infested with Rogue, during my Warlock run i actually faced 5 Rogues in a row at the end.
It seems like people haven't figured out just how powerful Warlock is yet i have only encountered them 5 times.
Portal Keeper has been exceeding my expectations, it has been consistent and useful some games. I feel like it's on the verge of greatness, if those rush minions were 3/3's instead i think it would be stupid good but it gets knocked to hard for being 2/2's. It's definitely underscored atm.
The Lackey's have also been insane. Anything that makes a Lackey is a top notch card. I think that's just another reason why Rogue is soaring, not only are Lackey's powerful but they give Rogue cheap combo activation.
Final notes would be i do believe i was right about Druid being better than Priest, it sure looks that way currently but it can't be a slow control Druid it has to be token centered with reach. All the powerful cards Druid got this expansion are almost all token based. So when you draft with Druid you draft towards aggressive fast decks with token support and reach. I would have never gotten 12 wins without Starfire, Swipe, Savage Roar, they won me almost every game.
So what are your first impressions with Rise of Shadows arena? Do you like the old sets back? What cards are beating your ass?
Also, Blizzard just released the current Arena Rules together with a spreadsheet containing the buckets.
I did one 3-3 Shaman run (with rather shitty deck) and one 11-3 WL run (with two Abyssal Enforcers that did carry quite hard). I know this is a super small sample size, but this is what iv gathered so far:
Nefarian
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Underbelly Fence works with Jade Spirit is it a bug?
no, since technically it is a druid and shaman card as well as rogue
Underbelly Fence underwhelms. Not getting buffed on curve, so getting eaten by anything and everything later. Also, even with treble burglar, double huckster, and a fox, I'm ending up with no cards from another class by turn 9 sometimes. Yay.
Hench-Clan Burglar is surprisingly bad. The amount of abysmal spells means it's basically vanilla. Woo.
Legendaries are everywhere. 2 games, one Y'sharrj, one Khadgar into power of creation. Yeah, I'll just deal with four 4/2 diving shield charge...
Either you're hyper-aggressive, and decks with five >4 mana cards are too slow, or you have 5+ good boardwipes.
This is shaping up to be another abysmal "Don't get a good legendary? Don't bother." tripefest, with the added bonus of basically being "who's faster, unless someone got lots of AE". Not seeing myself playing much arena again here.
I'm currently only 2-0 with Priest but I have a feeling that this class is going to be really powerful for the next 2 months. So many cheap removals and high stats early minions.
Honestly, i've only played one match and went 3-3 with Mage with a 64 point deck but I had a lot of fun doing it. When I played I noticed that pretty much everyone I saw had at least one legendary and one Warlock even played Arch-Villain Rafaam on curve into Prophet Velen, White Eyes, Soggoth the Slitherer, Emeriss, and Ysera so that kinda made quit in a violent rage.
Tried a Shaman run, ended up with 5 Jade Lightning and 2 Jade Claws. Not an arena player but loved the new format
I had a 5 win run as Priest and definitely the best card I had was Batterhead
2 - 3 in shaman run.
1st win was due to massive missplay by my opponent who didn't know how conjurer's calling works, therefore destroying my proud defender into polluted hoarder and aberrant berserker.
1nd win was steamrolling my opponent with underbelly angler and nightmare amalgam and producing constructed ammount of murlocs.
Losses were also due to my opponent steamrolling me (1 hunter especially has constructed hand with hyenas and other beasts O_O).
From this one run, I believe that we will be seeing semi-constructed decks, but I may be wrong.
My first run was 8:3 Rogue Run. Tempo works very well. Started another Rogue run, that one performs poorly (currently at 4:2), although it contains two EVIL Miscreant which are according to HSReplay one of the best performing Arena cards right now. That second deck has less card discover, so run out of cards occasionally.
4:2 is good ATM for tempo, in my experience. Arena is full of huge swingy legendaries and boardwipes, though I was often <5 damage away in my last run (1:3), so maybe it was picking what looked like good cards that actually bombed (things like the fence being mediocre, and the burglar being bad, because often enough all three choices were turd-quality) that was the issue, paired with scarcity of reach.
Doom , 7mana raffam I have. 9 1drop. Quiet strong. 7-0 now .
went 10-3 with warlock first run - flame imp on 1, aoe (abyssal enforcers) felt v. powerful
I played against a mage with 3 flamestrikes and a couple games where opponents had all the answers to lose
I think shadequill is relatively strong, but it's done nothing so far for me, because high value legendaries are pretty hard to beat (oh, look, I'm 1-1, and the opp's dropping in geddon. That's hard to beat when I needed to burn a MC on something decently-sized in the late midgame to not lose my board entirely). Defias Cleaner should be good, though, again, done little because of the sheer stupidity of decks. Potion of madness has been utter trash, surprisingly - no real targets most of the time. Daring reporter is okay, but outclassed by top-quality stuff.
Portal keeper did a surprising amount of work for my opp, though that was more RNG than anything else. Unleash the beast is HUGE value in a slower hunter draft.
Big minions seem to be the meta today, there is very few hard removal. Especially stupid derranged doctor,which is not a very good card, is in every other deck and it just works lol.
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They need to drastically lower the power level of the decks. Get a few wins and almost every opponent has like 4+ Evil Miscreants, 2+ Abyssal Enforcers, etc
Hand-buff paladin is real lol. Every pally iv met SoJ + 2-3 hand buff cards and at least 2 Bronze Heralds to keep the hand nicely full. Not nice!
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I really enjoyed playing the value/control Warrior in arena but I'm glad it's gone. Same for remove everything Warlock.
New arena feels pretty fresh and also a lot quicker than before (can be a sign of some unbalanced buckets here and there).
Classes seem to be closer to each other, assuming from my runs with Rogue and Hunter, which I barely played pre RoS due to lacking success.
Nope.
I have done 5 runs so far.
3-3 Priest
7-3 Rogue
11-3 Warlock
12-2 Druid
12-2 Mage
Started out rough but red hot since.
Rogue is as dominant as i figured they would be, being the top 2. Most of my high win games is infested with Rogue, during my Warlock run i actually faced 5 Rogues in a row at the end.
It seems like people haven't figured out just how powerful Warlock is yet i have only encountered them 5 times.
Portal Keeper has been exceeding my expectations, it has been consistent and useful some games. I feel like it's on the verge of greatness, if those rush minions were 3/3's instead i think it would be stupid good but it gets knocked to hard for being 2/2's. It's definitely underscored atm.
The Lackey's have also been insane. Anything that makes a Lackey is a top notch card. I think that's just another reason why Rogue is soaring, not only are Lackey's powerful but they give Rogue cheap combo activation.
Final notes would be i do believe i was right about Druid being better than Priest, it sure looks that way currently but it can't be a slow control Druid it has to be token centered with reach. All the powerful cards Druid got this expansion are almost all token based. So when you draft with Druid you draft towards aggressive fast decks with token support and reach. I would have never gotten 12 wins without Starfire, Swipe, Savage Roar, they won me almost every game.
So, queued against a warlock who played Arch-Villain Rafaam into Lord Jaraxxus, Alexstrasza, Kalecgos, a C'Thun and more...
Giving him so much survivability and power. I guess he was lucky but man did it feel unfair.