Hearthpwn

Quote from Nargacuga15 >>

I really think you just high roll and low roll sometimes on making a good arena deck. You can be a great arena player, but if you get offered trash cards or look at your roster after 30 and think you don't have a lot of synergy you are probably not going to do well. Arena wasn't designed for people to win-streak 12 runs- everyone would pour into arena and start farming their collection. Also the new rotation could be messing with your head. Maybe you had your ground, but then you got stuck with classes you play less and that accounts for your losses.

 You can high and low roll your win totals but you should have a baseline average that already factors good and bad decks/classes.  

At the end of the day Arena isnt a format that is "easy" to farm, people seem to forget the global average is about 3 wins. 

Really? Fresh expansion there are tons of inexperienced players playing right now. Everyone's win rates should be higher then normal IMO.  

OP, if you are churning out 12 wins consistently prior to the expansion, you shouldn't be struggle right now. It's a tempo meta, very few control match ups, and play around Abyssal Enforcer on T7 meta. 

Maybe variance? So play more runs and see if you can right the ship. 

I've only finished 6 drafts so far and most things were as expected.  I've been doing pretty well but dont necessarily feel I am in control of the games I am in. A lot of games feel like they are won and loss out of thin air. While "fun" it isnt necessarily the most ideal if you're opposed to some variance.  

Rogue is oppressively strong right now with the ability to fully control your board while out valuing you. It's pretty disgusting.  Expecting an adjustment next week. 

Thanks man, will be a fun experience !

Standard arena.  

Apologies for the late update. 

Patch hit Dec 19th.  

Couple things changed notable the fall of Druid from upper mid tier class to dumpster fire class. Some serious nerfs to constructed Druid cards surely hurt them in Arena as well, but I'm also guessing the up bucketing of Starfire and Starfall, some key cards for them have also hurt them.  

Mind Control Tech has finally been removed !  

Warrior - Hunter - Rogue are reigning supreme right now in the Meta, but it's a hard Meta to give specific advice on since certain drafts will be pretty hard countered either by Warrior or Hunter, so it feels much more match up dependent then previous (this is what I mean by Polarized) and less so on your drafting / playing ability.  

GL in the Arena! 

Quote from Draco_Cracona >>

Did Dragon Roar get a stealth nerf to appearance rates? I've barely seen any lately, and had multiple warr runs with zero offered. Could easily be RNG, but curious as to others' experience here.

 It's in 70% of warrior decks and has gone up from 50% since the last set of patch changes. 

Quote from Notorious_BLT >>

I'm really struggling so far this meta, average is 5.2 currently. Anyone got any tips? I've had good success with Hunter but having no luck with Warrior or Rogue, which were by far my best classes in Boomsday and are allegedly still strong according to HSReplay. I keep drafting what I think are good decks with both and then just losing to decks that are faster, despite having enough 2/3-drops. But then I also often find I don't have enough big cards to out-value other decks I meet. So I seem to be succeeding at neither tempo/aggro nor control. 

I've only had 11 runs so far so not the end of the world but it's kind of getting to me and starting to tilt a bit... 

 

 I just cleaned up my 1st 30 run sample today with a 7.40 average. The meta is quite polarized like I mentioned before sometimes you get the right match ups and steam roll. Mid range decks feel less successful because they get out valued by control and lose to aggro before stabilizing. However you do run into other mid range decks often (most decks are actually midrange), so it's more of a fair shake.  

I think in terms of drafting theres only a couple class that can make a midrange approach work - Rogue, Hunter in particular are good. Otherwise pushing towards an aggro or control build with the other classes would be recommended.   

3 drops are still very important, a strong curve, some refill and some way to finish the game is always what I look for. Even the most heavily value oriented decks cant rely solely on their removal to win the game so you still need some curve. Same can said about the most aggressive decks, having 1 or 2 ways to give you extra punching power to finish a game isn't that bad. However just keep your draft focused otherwise you might end up with a mess. 

I dont like giving strict guidelines on drafting because I feel it's too rigid, just something to think about.  

Quote from ZashikiHS >>

Good tierlist/meta report. I haven't tried Hunter yet, but Rexxar seems like a solid choice to deal with the high amount of greedy decks in the current meta (plus being strong vs Rogue). Is anyone doing well with Priest? It's the most picked class according to my stats, but at the same time I have the highest WR against them (87% in 45 matches). I did exactly one Priest run myself last month which ended in a miserable 1-3, so I'm curious how experienced Priest players draft in the current meta.

btw. congrats Boozor for placing #2 on NA for the Nov leaderboard, very impressive!

 Thanks Zalaski,  was a stinger to lose out on 1st again but I'll live with 2nd :)  

Hunter is really fun. It performs well, drafts decently and is a nice change of pace you should try it out.  

Priest drafts feel way more inconsistent right now. New set doesnt help the class much. ALSO, global class pick rate never matches win rates. Remember how rogue is always near the top yet no one takes rogue.  

Quote from Draco_Cracona >>

Quote from freakin3 >>

I don't know why they stopped with the new set bonus, but it's a huge problem for me.   Arena doesn't seem different at all, and my drafts don't tend to end up with more than 2 new cards unless I make a point of picking just the new cards.  

It's the old meta, you just occasionally see a rushing taunt and a minion that does one damage to all that isn't a warlock card now.

 I see a fair few new cards, but warrior is either insane or trash, never in the middle (get an early lancer and literally one dragon? Yeah.). And you're either against extreme aggro or extreme control with the top two classes. Pretty damn hard to effectively counter both, so there's heavy RNG in what you queue up against. Also, Dragon roar is pretty nuts against anything control-based. Most warr v warr games come down to who got the most roars, and the best results. Uncontrollable RNG is good, right?  

Anyway, of new cards, I find myself picking former champ a lot, along with the trickster. Sul'theraze is a weapon, thus gets picked just for that. Baited appears fairly often, as does blast wave. Dragon roar is common as feck, I've seen treble roar in some drafts (though none in this one). Most decks are slower, other than the hunters, so you'll draft a slow deck and have to play very aggressively or get crushed by a bunch of lategame dragons. Feels very different, though very rock-paper-scissors, and it's easy to get handed a bad deck because the synergy cards don't appear.

 Pretty much it. The meta is polarized in that you cant really build a deck to be strong against all decks since Warrior and Hunter work on opposite spectrums. It's a hairy meta, but it's still nice to have 2 of the worse classes traditionally , performing well. 

Quote from freakin3 >>

I don't know why they stopped with the new set bonus, but it's a huge problem for me.   Arena doesn't seem different at all, and my drafts don't tend to end up with more than 2 new cards unless I make a point of picking just the new cards.  

It's the old meta, you just occasionally see a rushing taunt and a minion that does one damage to all that isn't a warlock card now.

 The developers comment to this was that they felt that decks end up having too many of the same new cards so they removed the offering bonus. He also said they are looking into new ways to add new ways to increase the new feeling of arena when a new expansion is released, but didnt go into details.  

I think Griftah is fine :) 

Quote from Alpure >>

Thanks a lot for this article. I'm mostly an arena-only player and I was out of the loop the past weeks.

P.S. just a friendly correction : in any comparison it's "better THAN", not "then".
But your answer: "are you grammar nerd then?" :D

Cheers

 Appreciate it. Theres a couple grammatical issues with the article for sure. My mod team has alerted of them too :p I'll have to comb thru it when I get a moment. Thank you. 

Full Meta and class list update. 

Key take away is Hunter is now a feared class and you should expect many of them in the Arena. 

Odds are yes.