I don't even know what to say here, I'm just so frustrated with my own suckitude. I've been playing for about a month, watched tons of how-to videos, use heartharena.com to help me draft, studied the different archetypes and practiced effective trading....but the best I've ever done is 5 wins one time. Most of them are 0-2 wins and I don't know what I'm doing wrong? I feel like every move I make just isn't as good as theirs ALL the time.
I'm not greedy, I don't care about 12 win runs, I just don't to suck so bad so I don't have to wait 2-3 days to save up gold to play arena again (and die embarrassingly).
The arena depends a lot on your play style. Drafting correctly is the first critical part and playing correctly is the second. Most contructed decks give you a straight forward way to play as you can see other pros play that deck and you learn to adapt accordingly. Arena is more difficult to learn because the deck is not the same so you need to figure out your answers as you go along.
The most important winning factor of arena is initial board control. This involves a lot of on the spot decision making. For instance, if your opponent has a 3/1 on the board on turn 4, your choice could be to ping that minion and pass your turn as you have no 2 drops or play a 4/5 yeti. Having an empty board is usually a bad thing, so the correct play usually would be to play the yeti to have board presence. However, this again depends a lot on your hand, if you have a lot of spells, if you have good turn 5 play, what cards do you feel your opponent has, etc. which means you need to learn how to make these decisions. The early mages I play against are usually so caught up with pinging 1 health minions, that they leave empty boards for the opponent to capitalise on.
Another crucial factor in arena is knowing when to start going face opposed to trading with your opponents minions. This is most critical in moving up on the wins ladder in arena. I have a had lot of what looked like unwinnable situations which got me the win by going for face when I realised I had no option but to do so (for instance, lack of cards against 5 cards in opponents hand). Do not underestimate the power of Top Draw !! However for this you need to know your deck and try to build a situation where a certain top draw will get you the win.
All in all, you probably need someone to spectate you and help you with play style and general concepts of play. Would be happy to help should you need it.
you need a coach to help you pin point some areas you need to work on. what i've noticed from coaching my friend who was kinda in the same boat as yourself that his mulligans were setting him far back everygame. not knowing how important it is to mulligan aggressively and accordingly can make it really hard to start getting wins. I'm not saying this is what the problem is. it just something I'm always thinking thats holding newer players back from being better at the game.
his logic 4 seasons ago: aggro shaman going first against hunter he keeps doomhammer without 1 or 2 drop...
lots of advice and coaching later..
currently: aggro shaman going first against hunter he diggs for 1s&2s and strictly the best early game
I know this examples for constructed but same applies
I agree that mulligans is probably a big part of losing when you start out in arena. Because you are unfamiliar with your deck you aren't sure what's worth keeping and how aggressive you need to play.
Arena snowballs very quickly, so those early picks are really important. You can pick a great deck and trade in the best way but if you find your opponent is always outpacing you on board, you likely didn't have a good start going.
Thanks for the advice everyone! For mulligans I always for 1s & 2s and try to have a decent curve going in. I feel confident in what's going on up until a few rounds in and everything just falls apart. Cards seem all wrong, trades I would think would be good end up not being enough, and it always *seems* like they just have a better deck. Obviously that's not true but it just "feels" that way. Thanks again all!
Capture and upload your HS replays (it is just changing a few game settings in the background to capture your game moves) to http://www.zerotoheroes.com/s/hearthstone/ and we will help you out.
I average 6-7 wins, if you exclude this last month where I have averaged 3, maybe I am just getting super unlucky but I think arena has been harder for a while, but yeah arena is generally hard to get the hang of and all I can say is practice, I started playing arena whenever I could and lost most of the time with a record of 2 wins for like a year, then I started watching people play arena and figured out what seemed good and started doing well, after a few months of practice, it takes time and effort. Also, not getting more than 5 wins is understandable especially these days because after like 3 wins, everything gets insane fast. paladins with 2 muster for battle 2 weapons and 2 legendaries is like common at 6 wins now, I am disturbed by this trend, but keep trying and maybe you will get lucky and not see the insane decks I see all the time.
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Just fill your deck with one drops, that is creative deck design, right?
I agree with everyone here who has noted that arena has generally gotten harder. The ever-expanding card pool means there is a higher level of variance in each card selection in the draft, so it really is possible to have 5-6 very weak cards in your draft through no fault of your own. At the same time, it feels like the player base better understands arena thanks to streamers and the draft guide sites, so easy wins are harder to come by as well.
I'm a 5-6 win average player, so good but not great. My advice would be to think about deck construction a lot earlier than many of the arena guides, which will tell you to just value draft picks 1-10 in most cases. While value drafting, particularly at the low end of the curve, is critical, so is understanding the core playstyle(s) of your chosen class and drafting into them. As an example, when drafting mage, I favor minions with AOE effects much more than in any other class, because I know I'm likely to get a decent control kit via mage spells and sometimes a 1-damage AOE from a minion just prior to a flamestrike or blizzard makes the difference between an empty board and my opponent having lethal the next turn. When drafting Rogue, my focus usually shifts to drafting heals however I can get them because I know I'll be using my face to clear minions and gain tempo wherever possible.
Certainly a lot of other good advice in this thread as well.
Wow, you guys are fantastic! Thanks so much. For those offering to view, how do I add you to friends? I see the place to add but it seems to need a name and a number.
I'm not sure that match was winnable for you, but you definitely made a few suboptimal plays that, in a closer match, could have meant the difference between winning and losing.
On turn 5 the better play would've been to protector your silvermoon, trade into his puddlestomper, then heal yourself with the earthen ring. Not a huge difference, but since the rogue still had a charge on his knife the divine shield on his turn is mostly irrelevant, removing the 3-attack minion makes his trades worse against your board, and you net 3 HP.
Turn 6 was a complicated one. I agree with playing the Murloc Knight - you needed strength on the board at that point and tomb spider and arcane nullifier were way too passive. I think the right play was to trade the bluegill and silvermoon into the squidface. He only gets one charge on his weapon buff that way and you get value out of the divine shield on your silvermoon. His next turn was extremely powerful though, so I don't think it would've turned the game in your favor.
After that the game was basically over - barring some kind of great topdeck - and I don't know what was in the rest of your deck. I don't know if you were tilted but I think you started to play worse toward the end of the game. Turn 8 was particularly odd, the equality play just didn't seem to accomplish much of anything and you had 2 decent 4 drops in your hand - or even Kodo + golem was probably better.
Unwinnable games will happen in arena. You'll get hard countered or draw terribly or run into a monster deck. All you can do is strive to make the best plays every turn. Keep challenging yourself to do that, and continue to question the decisions you make, and you will improve in the long run. Don't fall into the trap of blaming RNG or your opponent's deck whenever you lose - always look for ways you could've played better, even when those better plays wouldn't have changed the outcome of any one particular game.
On turn 5 the better play would've been to protector your silvermoon, trade into his puddlestomper, then heal yourself with the earthen ring. Not a huge difference, but since the rogue still had a charge on his knife the divine shield on his turn is mostly irrelevant, removing the 3-attack minion makes his trades worse against your board, and you net 3 HP.
I agree with this play entirely, this is probably what made the biggest difference in the game. Often its one turn which decides the game. Of course without knowing his hand its difficult to predict whether it would have eventually helped you win.
Turn 6 was a tough play for you but even so exposing the murloc knight was perhaps an error. I would have preferred to play the Arcane Nullifier with hero power.
Games are lost both because of deck make-up and play. That game however was unwinnable for you. His turn 3 was pretty back breaking. You needed a weapon for any hope at catching up.
You will absolutely lose games though if you misplay even one turn. If your deck is amazing you can get away with mistakes, but often, one mistake will create a chain reaction.
Personally I get 12 wins regularly while making a good amount of mistakes, which means I'm drafting solid enough decks. Ideally though those mistakes come later, early, they can lead to a board you can't deal with.
Thanks to everyone who took time to look at the replay. I will absolutely take all this great advice to heart and work on getting my game better. Thanks again to everyone for helping me out!
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I don't even know what to say here, I'm just so frustrated with my own suckitude. I've been playing for about a month, watched tons of how-to videos, use heartharena.com to help me draft, studied the different archetypes and practiced effective trading....but the best I've ever done is 5 wins one time. Most of them are 0-2 wins and I don't know what I'm doing wrong? I feel like every move I make just isn't as good as theirs ALL the time.
I'm not greedy, I don't care about 12 win runs, I just don't to suck so bad so I don't have to wait 2-3 days to save up gold to play arena again (and die embarrassingly).
Any tips, advice. anything that could help me?
The arena depends a lot on your play style. Drafting correctly is the first critical part and playing correctly is the second. Most contructed decks give you a straight forward way to play as you can see other pros play that deck and you learn to adapt accordingly. Arena is more difficult to learn because the deck is not the same so you need to figure out your answers as you go along.
The most important winning factor of arena is initial board control. This involves a lot of on the spot decision making. For instance, if your opponent has a 3/1 on the board on turn 4, your choice could be to ping that minion and pass your turn as you have no 2 drops or play a 4/5 yeti. Having an empty board is usually a bad thing, so the correct play usually would be to play the yeti to have board presence. However, this again depends a lot on your hand, if you have a lot of spells, if you have good turn 5 play, what cards do you feel your opponent has, etc. which means you need to learn how to make these decisions. The early mages I play against are usually so caught up with pinging 1 health minions, that they leave empty boards for the opponent to capitalise on.
Another crucial factor in arena is knowing when to start going face opposed to trading with your opponents minions. This is most critical in moving up on the wins ladder in arena. I have a had lot of what looked like unwinnable situations which got me the win by going for face when I realised I had no option but to do so (for instance, lack of cards against 5 cards in opponents hand). Do not underestimate the power of Top Draw !! However for this you need to know your deck and try to build a situation where a certain top draw will get you the win.
All in all, you probably need someone to spectate you and help you with play style and general concepts of play. Would be happy to help should you need it.
you need a coach to help you pin point some areas you need to work on. what i've noticed from coaching my friend who was kinda in the same boat as yourself that his mulligans were setting him far back everygame. not knowing how important it is to mulligan aggressively and accordingly can make it really hard to start getting wins. I'm not saying this is what the problem is. it just something I'm always thinking thats holding newer players back from being better at the game.
his logic 4 seasons ago: aggro shaman going first against hunter he keeps doomhammer without 1 or 2 drop...
lots of advice and coaching later..
currently: aggro shaman going first against hunter he diggs for 1s&2s and strictly the best early game
I know this examples for constructed but same applies
I agree that mulligans is probably a big part of losing when you start out in arena. Because you are unfamiliar with your deck you aren't sure what's worth keeping and how aggressive you need to play.
Arena snowballs very quickly, so those early picks are really important. You can pick a great deck and trade in the best way but if you find your opponent is always outpacing you on board, you likely didn't have a good start going.
Thanks for the advice everyone! For mulligans I always for 1s & 2s and try to have a decent curve going in. I feel confident in what's going on up until a few rounds in and everything just falls apart. Cards seem all wrong, trades I would think would be good end up not being enough, and it always *seems* like they just have a better deck. Obviously that's not true but it just "feels" that way. Thanks again all!
Capture and upload your HS replays (it is just changing a few game settings in the background to capture your game moves) to http://www.zerotoheroes.com/s/hearthstone/ and we will help you out.
I average 6-7 wins, if you exclude this last month where I have averaged 3, maybe I am just getting super unlucky but I think arena has been harder for a while, but yeah arena is generally hard to get the hang of and all I can say is practice, I started playing arena whenever I could and lost most of the time with a record of 2 wins for like a year, then I started watching people play arena and figured out what seemed good and started doing well, after a few months of practice, it takes time and effort. Also, not getting more than 5 wins is understandable especially these days because after like 3 wins, everything gets insane fast. paladins with 2 muster for battle 2 weapons and 2 legendaries is like common at 6 wins now, I am disturbed by this trend, but keep trying and maybe you will get lucky and not see the insane decks I see all the time.
Just fill your deck with one drops, that is creative deck design, right?
I agree with everyone here who has noted that arena has generally gotten harder. The ever-expanding card pool means there is a higher level of variance in each card selection in the draft, so it really is possible to have 5-6 very weak cards in your draft through no fault of your own. At the same time, it feels like the player base better understands arena thanks to streamers and the draft guide sites, so easy wins are harder to come by as well.
I'm a 5-6 win average player, so good but not great. My advice would be to think about deck construction a lot earlier than many of the arena guides, which will tell you to just value draft picks 1-10 in most cases. While value drafting, particularly at the low end of the curve, is critical, so is understanding the core playstyle(s) of your chosen class and drafting into them. As an example, when drafting mage, I favor minions with AOE effects much more than in any other class, because I know I'm likely to get a decent control kit via mage spells and sometimes a 1-damage AOE from a minion just prior to a flamestrike or blizzard makes the difference between an empty board and my opponent having lethal the next turn. When drafting Rogue, my focus usually shifts to drafting heals however I can get them because I know I'll be using my face to clear minions and gain tempo wherever possible.
Certainly a lot of other good advice in this thread as well.
Wow, you guys are fantastic! Thanks so much. For those offering to view, how do I add you to friends? I see the place to add but it seems to need a name and a number.
Thanks for the direction to that site. I've uploaded one of my replays in case anyone has a couple minutes. Here is the link:
http://www.zerotoheroes.com/r/hearthstone/57747d28e4b0b95d6185e680/battleboyle-arena-20160628-paladin-classic-aggro
Thanks again for the advice!
Games are lost both because of deck make-up and play. That game however was unwinnable for you. His turn 3 was pretty back breaking. You needed a weapon for any hope at catching up.
You will absolutely lose games though if you misplay even one turn. If your deck is amazing you can get away with mistakes, but often, one mistake will create a chain reaction.
Personally I get 12 wins regularly while making a good amount of mistakes, which means I'm drafting solid enough decks. Ideally though those mistakes come later, early, they can lead to a board you can't deal with.
Thanks to everyone who took time to look at the replay. I will absolutely take all this great advice to heart and work on getting my game better. Thanks again to everyone for helping me out!