Hearthpwn

After playing with some of the first wing minions I don't think I would change any of my initial ratings, but I will say that Djinni of Zephyrs is amazing in the right deck.  I drafted him in a Paladin deck with Blessing of Wisdom, Blessing of Kings, and Seal of Champions.  Every game he hit the board I was able to abuse his ability and create loads of problems for my opponents.

Quote from EchelonHD >>

Tunnel Trogg has more ability to spiral out of control than Mana Wyrm, though, since you need a separate spell card for each of Mana Wyrm's +1 attack but one Earth Elemental can boost Tunnel Trogg to 4/3 proportions. 

Tunnel Trogg is a much better late game card than Mana Wyrm but even early game you have an opportunity to drop cards like Lightning Bolt, Crackle, Stormforged Axe, and Totem Golem to boost it to Zombie Chow stats.

Overall, I think Tunnel Trogg > Mana Wyrm. This is an easy 1, IMO, even when we're talking about Arena.

• Fireball, Flamestrike, Flamecannon, Frostbolt and Polymorph. Flame Lance is also quite playable and Spellslinger is a common card that gives you a spell.
• In the rare slot, we have Blizzard and Unstable Portal to help out.
• On top of that, you have The Coin in half the games and the new discover cards have a good chance of giving you a spell option, as well as having our new torch which can give 2 spells.

Meanwhile, shaman overload cards give:

• in the common slot Stormforged Axe(1), Fireguard Destroyer(1), Lightning Bolt(1), Totem Golem(1) and Crackle(2). You might also include Ancestral Knowledge(2) if you value that highly enough to draft regularly.
• Rare has Lightning Storm(2), Feral Spirit(2) and Lava Burst(2).

In short, both 1-drops are pretty close in terms of card choices and most of those cards will give comparable value too, with the most popular common cards overloading for only 1. On top of that, both sets of cards work well for protecting the 1-mana minion (being removal or taunts), and both are mostly fairly cheap cards that can follow directly after a turn 1 play of your minion. In short, it looks like Tunnel Trogg may indeed be a worthy competitor to Mana Wyrm.

League of Explorers has some minions that come with come awkward stats and effects in comparison to minions of the same mana cost.  So it's difficult to predict how effective they will be without experimentation.

I’ve been having success with Anubisath Sentinel and Ancient Shade in aggressive classes such as Warlock and Hunter.  11 wins with Sentinel in Warlock and 11 wins with Shade in Hunter.  So close to 12 wins

Shade is very far away from being terrible and I think it deserves a 3.  It just needs to be in a draft with a strong early game.

And has anyone found a class and deck archetype for Jeweled Scarab and Tomb Spider.  I tend to draft very aggressive and I'm hesitant to pick these minions because they probably fit better in slower drafts.

i love how ppl are taking jeweled scarab so often in arena. the loss in tempo is usually pretty huge. if I play a 2/3 and they play a jeweled scarab, they often end up at a reaaaally bad spot.

Quote from lionoffrost >>

Quote from EchelonHD >>

Tunnel Trogg has more ability to spiral out of control than Mana Wyrm, though, since you need a separate spell card for each of Mana Wyrm's +1 attack but one Earth Elemental can boost Tunnel Trogg to 4/3 proportions. 

Tunnel Trogg is a much better late game card than Mana Wyrm but even early game you have an opportunity to drop cards like Lightning Bolt, Crackle, Stormforged Axe, and Totem Golem to boost it to Zombie Chow stats.

Overall, I think Tunnel Trogg > Mana Wyrm. This is an easy 1, IMO, even when we're talking about Arena.

The question for Tunnel Trogg versus Mana Wyrm of course is not just about the value it can get, but how likely you are to have cards that give that value. For mage, spells that you want to draft include:

• Fireball, Flamestrike, Flamecannon, Frostbolt and Polymorph. Flame Lance is also quite playable and Spellslinger is a common card that gives you a spell.
• In the rare slot, we have Blizzard and Unstable Portal to help out.
• On top of that, you have The Coin in half the games and the new discover cards have a good chance of giving you a spell option, as well as having our new torch which can give 2 spells.

Meanwhile, shaman overload cards give:

• in the common slot Stormforged Axe(1), Fireguard Destroyer(1), Lightning Bolt(1), Totem Golem(1) and Crackle(2). You might also include Ancestral Knowledge(2) if you value that highly enough to draft regularly.
• Rare has Lightning Storm(2), Feral Spirit(2) and Lava Burst(2).

In short, both 1-drops are pretty close in terms of card choices and most of those cards will give comparable value too, with the most popular common cards overloading for only 1. On top of that, both sets of cards work well for protecting the 1-mana minion (being removal or taunts), and both are mostly fairly cheap cards that can follow directly after a turn 1 play of your minion. In short, it looks like Tunnel Trogg may indeed be a worthy competitor to Mana Wyrm.

I played against a Warrior activated Reno Jackson successful yesterday in arena. It was funny, even though I still won with Shaman.

Had a bad start with 0-2 but comeback 7-3. For me, Shaman is really strong in arena.

Quote from fauxC >>

I just watched Kripp's latest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kaEJpk65L0 video, in which he gets rapidly rekd by perfect Arena decks. He seems genuinely stunned by what happens, but it's all incredibly familiar to me. As far as I'm concerned, that's just what Arena is like now.

One big problem of arena is powercreep. No, i am not one of these Doomsayers that see the world fall apart because of an Ice Rager. But in Arena this is a problem. It is a big difference if you draft a Bloodfen Raptor or a Huge Toad. And especially mediocre and overpowered minions like Piloted Shredder. Getting one of those increases your winrate by a huge amount, while for example The Grand Tournament introduced so many mediocre Minions while LoE has so many good and useable ones. Also the % chance to get an AoE or an Hard Removal gets lower and lower from expansion to expansion. When you are lucky and draft 2 Flamestrike, a few damage Spells and at least a shredder, congratulation to 12 wins.

Personally i would add a small change to arena: you can redraw 3 times. When you have a so bad hand that you simply cannot use any of the minions, try your luck and redraw.

Quote from Velerios >>

Personally i would add a small change to arena: you can redraw 3 times. When you have a so bad hand that you simply cannot use any of the minions, try your luck and redraw.

Quote from AbusingKel >>

Quote from Velerios >>

One big problem of arena is powercreep. No, i am not one of these Doomsayers that see the world fall apart because of an Ice Rager. But in Arena this is a problem. It is a big difference if you draft a Bloodfen Raptor or a Huge Toad. And especially mediocre and overpowered minions like Piloted Shredder. Getting one of those increases your winrate by a huge amount, while for example The Grand Tournament introduced so many mediocre Minions while LoE has so many good and useable ones. Also the % chance to get an AoE or an Hard Removal gets lower and lower from expansion to expansion. When you are lucky and draft 2 Flamestrike, a few damage Spells and at least a shredder, congratulation to 12 wins.

Personally i would add a small change to arena: you can redraw 3 times. When you have a so bad hand that you simply cannot use any of the minions, try your luck and redraw.

 

I think this is clearly what's happening in arena. The gap between decks can be outrageous. A few bad cards (because you had to take the best of 3 terrible cards) can easily put you too far behind to catch up when your opponent is playing cards that severely outclass your deck. Essentially, you can easily find yourself in a situation where your deck is only as good as its worst few cards.

Quote from Kakutov >>

How about giving some op cards like: Ethereal Conjurer and Keeper of Uldaman for other classes...?

Ethereal Conjurer is actually pretty great in arena! He gives me the right spell at least 80% of the time. I can't think of many times when I didn't get either Polymorph, Fireball, Pyroblast, or Frostbolt as a choice. All are amazing spells.

Quote from lolifofo >>

Ethereal Conjurer is actually pretty great in arena! He gives me the right spell at least 80% of the time. I can't think of many times when I didn't get either Polymorph, Fireball, Pyroblast, or Frostbolt as a choice. All are amazing spells.

From what little I've played, and I stopped playing Arena shortly after TGT came out, it's gotten back to feeling like you can craft decks that are better than everyone else's, where I thought TGT made it so everybody had inspire cards coming out of their rear ends so you rarely ran into decks with primarily bad cards.   I think arena is at it's best when the skill comes in making the most out of mediocre options, not when everyone gets good cards.   Or else it's no better than constructed.   Plus the inspire plague made classes with bad hero powers worse, when they didn't really have room to be worse.  Having said that, Keeper of Uldaman is, ridiculous.  

Quote from freakin3 >>

From what little I've played, and I stopped playing Arena shortly after TGT came out, it's gotten back to feeling like you can craft decks that are better than everyone else's, where I thought TGT made it so everybody had inspire cards coming out of their rear ends so you rarely ran into decks with primarily bad cards.   I think arena is at it's best when the skill comes in making the most out of mediocre options, not when everyone gets good cards.   Or else it's no better than constructed.   Plus the inspire plague made classes with bad hero powers worse, when they didn't really have room to be worse.  Having said that, Keeper of Uldaman is, ridiculous.  

Quote from lolifofo >>

Ethereal Conjurer is actually pretty great in arena! He gives me the right spell at least 80% of the time. I can't think of many times when I didn't get either Polymorph, Fireball, Pyroblast, or Frostbolt as a choice. All are amazing spells.

Quote from neonangel >>

Quote from lolifofo >>

Ethereal Conjurer is actually pretty great in arena! He gives me the right spell at least 80% of the time. I can't think of many times when I didn't get either Polymorph, Fireball, Pyroblast, or Frostbolt as a choice. All are amazing spells.

 I agree and I would probably bump it up a notch or two in the rankings after having played with it more.

Quote from Sinti >>

Quote from freakin3 >>

From what little I've played, and I stopped playing Arena shortly after TGT came out, it's gotten back to feeling like you can craft decks that are better than everyone else's, where I thought TGT made it so everybody had inspire cards coming out of their rear ends so you rarely ran into decks with primarily bad cards.   I think arena is at it's best when the skill comes in making the most out of mediocre options, not when everyone gets good cards.   Or else it's no better than constructed.   Plus the inspire plague made classes with bad hero powers worse, when they didn't really have room to be worse.  Having said that, Keeper of Uldaman is, ridiculous.  

I think now more then ever is arena about your ability to detect if opponent is holding aoe/hard removal etc. and know if u should go for a win (face) or try stalling and play more careful or around specific card(s). Its not always so easy to tell and with discover there is even more things that can go wrong (if u wait too long and opponent gets miraculous recovery by discovering a specific card that saves him), thats my feeling about arena right now.

Quote from freakin3 >>

Quote from Sinti >>

Quote from freakin3 >>

From what little I've played, and I stopped playing Arena shortly after TGT came out, it's gotten back to feeling like you can craft decks that are better than everyone else's, where I thought TGT made it so everybody had inspire cards coming out of their rear ends so you rarely ran into decks with primarily bad cards.   I think arena is at it's best when the skill comes in making the most out of mediocre options, not when everyone gets good cards.   Or else it's no better than constructed.   Plus the inspire plague made classes with bad hero powers worse, when they didn't really have room to be worse.  Having said that, Keeper of Uldaman is, ridiculous.  

I think now more then ever is arena about your ability to detect if opponent is holding aoe/hard removal etc. and know if u should go for a win (face) or try stalling and play more careful or around specific card(s). Its not always so easy to tell and with discover there is even more things that can go wrong (if u wait too long and opponent gets miraculous recovery by discovering a specific card that saves him), thats my feeling about arena right now.

 The discover mechanic is basically more card draw, which means you can't really get away with no card draw like you may have been able to do before.   I'm usually not too bothered by my opponents playing the discover cards unless I haven't drafted enough card draw of my own.

Warrior is back to being sort of ok, that 7-7 is pretty solid, the spider tankish monkey is kinda ok too. 

To be honest though, I'll probably stop playing arena again soon, as as much as I think arena is back to being enjoyable, the game is a bit stale at this point.