I am NOT a very good player (mostly because I'm not great at predicting my opponents plays), but I understand the basic mechanics. I'm usually quite bad at arena (I average about 3-4 wins per deck) but this deck has turned out amazingly. I assumed it was going to be terrible because of the ridiculously bad mana curve and the triple assassinate, but currently it has the most wins of any deck I've played. I'm fairly certain the Hearthstone community generally agrees that mana curves take a backseat to good cards, but this mana curve is just horrendous! Furthermore, many times I play arena by judging my picks PURELY off ant1gravity's tier drafting list and disregard mana curve completely, and have terrible results.
Here's my basic question: given how well this deck has done, is it even necessary to consider mana curve at all in arena? Personally I think that choosing only the best cards and playing to their strengths is the way to go, but what do I know.
Sidenote: The double mad bomber has been ridiculously good for me so some of this might just be RNGesus.
Mana curve is just a fancy way of saying mana distribution. While your deck might not have a classic bell curve to it, you do have a reasonable distribution of minions across all mana costs. You may be short of 4-mana minions, but you make up for that somewhat with your excess of 2-mana mninions. You're always able to play minions on every turn throughout the game.
And yes, you do have to worry about mana distribution. How well do you think you'd do if 80% of your minions were 5 cost and above? You'd get wrecked in the early game and likely would be unable to come back in the late game.
You have a pretty good mana curve AND pretty good overall cards there.
I mean you would be better off with a few more 4drop creatures instead of all the 5 drops stuff. However, in terms of the 3 and under, that's more or less what many good decks look like. I'm not sure why you felt the mana curve was even bad though. it actually looks better than most.
When analysing your mana curve, it's best to consider only minions (and minion-like spells).
The reason to not include removal (and I count weapons as removal) are because they're reactionary cards; you are usually forced to play them in response to your opponent's plays, irrespective of how they fit into your mana allowance for that turn.
Taking this into consideration, If you look again at your draft, you'll see your minions form a perfectly reasonable mana curve for an aggressive rushy deck. (and given the generous amount of removal in that deck, it fits an aggro style perfectly)
Thanks for clearing that all up. I always thought mana curves were supposed to look like smooth curves peaking at two cost. I think the fact that I have no one drops doesn't matter too much because I'm rogue I guess. Idk if the lack of four drops makes me weak to pala, but I lost one game to a pala and had a really close one where I betrayaled his king cobra onto a ravenholdt lol
You want your mana to curve to the strength of your deck. Rogues have insanely good 2 drops, and you have 9 2 drops. Also, with 3 (three?!?) defias ringleaders, you are almost guaranteed when you go second and get coin.
On top of that, you have the 2 best non-class 4 cards enough to get you through midgame, so that if for some reason you are going past turn 7-8, you have really good high cost finisher minions.
I mean... dude. 3 Defias ringleaders, 2 harvest golem, 1 si:7 agent, 1 eviscerate, 2 backstab and a shadowstep to combo all these things, plus 2 azure drakes to really make those backstabs and eviscerates hurt a lot... I'm not saying it's a 12 win deck, but that is a LOT of pain you can dish out in the first 4, 5 turns that would be insurmountable for most of the scrubby kinds of arena decks people are forced to draw.
Pretty much any game that you go second, and aren't playing a mage, this kind of deck should be winning by turn 7, 8. Defias Ringleaders are borderline OP in arena. Most decks are not equipped with early game anti-rush defenses, only maybe paladin, and if you are smart you can draw out the consecrates and continue to pressure the paladin badly.
Your deck has great mana. One way to look at it is suppose you treat some of your 2 drops as 3s (They are quality 2 drops, who cares if you play it turn 3 and burn 1 mana), Treat some of your 3s as 4s (they are really good), and then treat some of your 5s as 6 (No problem at all your 5s are amazing), your curve would be perfect!
It's a strong opener, but draw it later and it often becomes a liability - being exceedingly vulnerable to AoE, and requiring a combo to utilize.
SI-7 is MUCH better; it gives the same early game momentum gain (sometimes even greater), yet remains extremely useful into the mid & late game.
if you have defias in your deck, always mulligan every time to get them in your opener hand. if you have 2 defias cards, you have like an 87% to draw them if you have coin (between your first set of draw cards and your second). The tempo they set in the first 3 turns puts the opponent so far behind it's almost impossible to catch up, and there are only so many swipes and consecrates any one player is going to have.
I agree SI:7 is better tho. SI:7 and Water Elemental are the 2 strongest class-specific minion cards in the game IMO right now for arena.
It's a strong opener, but draw it later and it often becomes a liability - being exceedingly vulnerable to AoE, and requiring a combo to utilize.
SI-7 is MUCH better; it gives the same early game momentum gain (sometimes even greater), yet remains extremely useful into the mid & late game.
if you have 2 defias cards, you have like an 87% to draw them if you have coin (between your first set of draw cards and your second).
How did you arrive at that number?
Deck of 30 cards; 2 target cards, 9 draws (4 + 4 + 1*)
Every calculator I've found on the net puts the probability of drawing 1+ targets @ 51.7%.
*This is not strictly accurate as by the time you draw your turn 1 card, the mulligan cards have been re-added to your deck, so the 9th draw is a 1/26 not 1/22.
If you draft 2 Defias, here are the probabilities of how many Defiases you will draw if you always throw away your entire hand if it does not contain any Defiases, and keep your entire hand if it does. Note that I do not account for throwing away any other cards once you already have a Defias.
Where k is the amount of Defiases:
P(k) = P(k from first 4) + P(0 from first 4) x P(k from second 4)
P(k from first 4) = P(k from second 4)
P(k) = P(k from first 4) x (1 + P(0 from first 4)) for k not equal to 0
P(0 from first 4) = 26!/30! x 28!/24! = 65/87, a little less than a 3/4 chance
P(1 from first 4) = 4 x 2/30 x 26!/29! x 28!/25! = 104/435, a little less than a 1/4 chance
P(2 from first 4) = 6 x 2/30 x 1/29 x 28!/26! x 26!/28! = 2/145, about a 1 and a third percent chance
Therefore:
Probability of no Defiases in opening hand (this case is an exception, it's simply P(0 from first 4) squared): 55.82%
Probability of one Defias in opening hand: 41.77%
Probability of two Defiases in opening hand: 2.41%
Probability of any Defiases in opening hand: 44.18%
Of course this all depends on the fact that you go second. If you go first, hope to god for a backstab and or a deadly poison. I don't know where that 87% came from, but it happens to be off by a factor of two lol
Mana curve is definitely better than good minions. For the second time I got a 3 legendary draft this weekend. However, I also got a grand total of 3 cards that cost 1 to 2 mana. I was a paladin and I had worgen infiltrator, mad bomber, and argent protector. Event Tirion, Hogger and Alexstrasza couldn't help with that mess. 4 wins and done.
You won because you had 2 backstabs and 3 assassinates and even looking at curves it's still not a bad deck because you got a little bit of everything. Arena is minion based so if you have a bunch of good removals then of course you're gonna win a lot.
I am NOT a very good player (mostly because I'm not great at predicting my opponents plays), but I understand the basic mechanics. I'm usually quite bad at arena (I average about 3-4 wins per deck) but this deck has turned out amazingly. I assumed it was going to be terrible because of the ridiculously bad mana curve and the triple assassinate, but currently it has the most wins of any deck I've played. I'm fairly certain the Hearthstone community generally agrees that mana curves take a backseat to good cards, but this mana curve is just horrendous! Furthermore, many times I play arena by judging my picks PURELY off ant1gravity's tier drafting list and disregard mana curve completely, and have terrible results.
Here's my basic question: given how well this deck has done, is it even necessary to consider mana curve at all in arena? Personally I think that choosing only the best cards and playing to their strengths is the way to go, but what do I know.
Sidenote: The double mad bomber has been ridiculously good for me so some of this might just be RNGesus.
Also does anyone have a suggestion for another tier drafting list, or is ant1gravity's the best...
Mana curve is just a fancy way of saying mana distribution. While your deck might not have a classic bell curve to it, you do have a reasonable distribution of minions across all mana costs. You may be short of 4-mana minions, but you make up for that somewhat with your excess of 2-mana mninions. You're always able to play minions on every turn throughout the game.
And yes, you do have to worry about mana distribution. How well do you think you'd do if 80% of your minions were 5 cost and above? You'd get wrecked in the early game and likely would be unable to come back in the late game.
Poetic.
You have a pretty good mana curve AND pretty good overall cards there.
I mean you would be better off with a few more 4drop creatures instead of all the 5 drops stuff. However, in terms of the 3 and under, that's more or less what many good decks look like. I'm not sure why you felt the mana curve was even bad though. it actually looks better than most.
When analysing your mana curve, it's best to consider only minions (and minion-like spells).
The reason to not include removal (and I count weapons as removal) are because they're reactionary cards; you are usually forced to play them in response to your opponent's plays, irrespective of how they fit into your mana allowance for that turn.
Taking this into consideration, If you look again at your draft, you'll see your minions form a perfectly reasonable mana curve for an aggressive rushy deck. (and given the generous amount of removal in that deck, it fits an aggro style perfectly)
Looks like pretty good minions and a good mana curve. Grats on the good draft.
Thanks for clearing that all up. I always thought mana curves were supposed to look like smooth curves peaking at two cost. I think the fact that I have no one drops doesn't matter too much because I'm rogue I guess. Idk if the lack of four drops makes me weak to pala, but I lost one game to a pala and had a really close one where I betrayaled his king cobra onto a ravenholdt lol
You want your mana to curve to the strength of your deck. Rogues have insanely good 2 drops, and you have 9 2 drops. Also, with 3 (three?!?) defias ringleaders, you are almost guaranteed when you go second and get coin.
On top of that, you have the 2 best non-class 4 cards enough to get you through midgame, so that if for some reason you are going past turn 7-8, you have really good high cost finisher minions.
I mean... dude. 3 Defias ringleaders, 2 harvest golem, 1 si:7 agent, 1 eviscerate, 2 backstab and a shadowstep to combo all these things, plus 2 azure drakes to really make those backstabs and eviscerates hurt a lot... I'm not saying it's a 12 win deck, but that is a LOT of pain you can dish out in the first 4, 5 turns that would be insurmountable for most of the scrubby kinds of arena decks people are forced to draw.
Pretty much any game that you go second, and aren't playing a mage, this kind of deck should be winning by turn 7, 8. Defias Ringleaders are borderline OP in arena. Most decks are not equipped with early game anti-rush defenses, only maybe paladin, and if you are smart you can draw out the consecrates and continue to pressure the paladin badly.
Your deck has great mana. One way to look at it is suppose you treat some of your 2 drops as 3s (They are quality 2 drops, who cares if you play it turn 3 and burn 1 mana), Treat some of your 3s as 4s (they are really good), and then treat some of your 5s as 6 (No problem at all your 5s are amazing), your curve would be perfect!
I could have drafted a total of 5 defias ringleaders if I picked them every time xD
Only 31 are too much defias rinleaders (?)
Defias has fallen out of favour in my drafts.
It's a strong opener, but draw it later and it often becomes a liability - being exceedingly vulnerable to AoE, and requiring a combo to utilize.
SI-7 is MUCH better; it gives the same early game momentum gain (sometimes even greater), yet remains extremely useful into the mid & late game.
if you have defias in your deck, always mulligan every time to get them in your opener hand. if you have 2 defias cards, you have like an 87% to draw them if you have coin (between your first set of draw cards and your second). The tempo they set in the first 3 turns puts the opponent so far behind it's almost impossible to catch up, and there are only so many swipes and consecrates any one player is going to have.
I agree SI:7 is better tho. SI:7 and Water Elemental are the 2 strongest class-specific minion cards in the game IMO right now for arena.
How did you arrive at that number?
Deck of 30 cards; 2 target cards, 9 draws (4 + 4 + 1*)
Every calculator I've found on the net puts the probability of drawing 1+ targets @ 51.7%.
*This is not strictly accurate as by the time you draw your turn 1 card, the mulligan cards have been re-added to your deck, so the 9th draw is a 1/26 not 1/22.
If you draft 2 Defias, here are the probabilities of how many Defiases you will draw if you always throw away your entire hand if it does not contain any Defiases, and keep your entire hand if it does. Note that I do not account for throwing away any other cards once you already have a Defias.
Where k is the amount of Defiases:
P(k) = P(k from first 4) + P(0 from first 4) x P(k from second 4)
P(k from first 4) = P(k from second 4)
P(k) = P(k from first 4) x (1 + P(0 from first 4)) for k not equal to 0
P(0 from first 4) = 26!/30! x 28!/24! = 65/87, a little less than a 3/4 chance
P(1 from first 4) = 4 x 2/30 x 26!/29! x 28!/25! = 104/435, a little less than a 1/4 chance
P(2 from first 4) = 6 x 2/30 x 1/29 x 28!/26! x 26!/28! = 2/145, about a 1 and a third percent chance
Therefore:
Probability of no Defiases in opening hand (this case is an exception, it's simply P(0 from first 4) squared): 55.82%
Probability of one Defias in opening hand: 41.77%
Probability of two Defiases in opening hand: 2.41%
Probability of any Defiases in opening hand: 44.18%
Of course this all depends on the fact that you go second. If you go first, hope to god for a backstab and or a deadly poison. I don't know where that 87% came from, but it happens to be off by a factor of two lol
Mana curve is definitely better than good minions. For the second time I got a 3 legendary draft this weekend. However, I also got a grand total of 3 cards that cost 1 to 2 mana. I was a paladin and I had worgen infiltrator, mad bomber, and argent protector. Event Tirion, Hogger and Alexstrasza couldn't help with that mess. 4 wins and done.
You won because you had 2 backstabs and 3 assassinates and even looking at curves it's still not a bad deck because you got a little bit of everything. Arena is minion based so if you have a bunch of good removals then of course you're gonna win a lot.