However, each class has characteristics that make lend itself to more/less decisions. If we compare the hero powers alone, to start, The hunters is simple: Have mana; will shoot. Warriors is the same. Priest and Mage get's a little more complex. What should I target? Druid is similar but the threat of face damage makes it sometimes scarier to use. Paladin get's a bit harder where creating another dude could make things like unleash the hounds more dangerous, or give mage another creature to flamestrike which means Dragon's breath costs 1 cheaper, etc. So it's not always an auto "use when mana's available" situation. Rogue goes further because 1: using it turns on harrison and 2: hitting means more damage to the hero. Warlock get's complex because it's really powerful, but it's a straight up downside. You can't just ping the face for free or get free life back. You get a card (awesome) for 2 life (not awesome) so every time you use it you have to be aware of if you can spare it and there's randomness in what card you would get. Shamans may not be the most difficult to consider "do i hero power or do I not" but you can't plan around it nearly as easily. Each time you use it you have 4 "timeline" options. Many scenarios require the correct totem to drop so you can either get full lightning storm damage, or a taunt to protect board/face.
On top of that we add class cards/mechanics. Shaman has the hardest time here because of overload in ANY deck type they play, overload is a factor. I avoid playing 9-mana cards in shaman deck because of overload which makes it a deck creation restriction AND a gameplay restriction. Rogue also has issues with their cards because sequencing matters more than others due to combo. Warlock is difficult because certain cards have discard attached to them so it can lose you a key piece to your strategy. Aside from that the other classes have the typical mana/power ratio issue that every class struggles with, but little more. Druids have "choose one" but often the choice is obvious. All aggro decks have the same sequencing decisions that face hunter have and some have more.
So it's not JUST the type of deck you play. The classes have very clear differences that make them harder/easier to play.
3
It turns out 8 Lesser Mithril Spellstones with 7 weapons is slightly too much. :-)
4
Just for people wondering about the math, say you have a one in three chance of drawing a dragon (7 out of 21 remaining cards) your expected number of draws is not 1.33 but rather:
1 (chance of drawing first card)
+ 7/21 (chance of drawing second card)
+ 7/21 * 6/20 (third card)
+ 7/21 * 6/20 * 5/19 (fourth card)
+ 7/21 * 6/20 * 5/19 * 4/18 (and so on...)
+ 7/21 * 6/20 * 5/19 * 4/18 * 3/17
+ 7/21 * 6/20 * 5/19 * 4/18 * 3/17 * 2/16
+ 7/21 * 6/20 * 5/19 * 4/18 * 3/17 * 2/16 * 1/15
or 1.47 cards on average. Still not terribly impressive, but certainly a bit better than just considering the 1 or 2 card scenario.
2
Take all of those points together and while you may still have had an unlucky streak, it is not as unlikely as it seems.
3
zammE, you would be right if Tentacles for Arms read:
Deathrattle: re-equip this weapon
but the way it reads now, you need to pay 5 mana every time you re-equip it. Imagine how worthless Dreadsteed would be if it said:
Deathrattle: add a Dreadsteed to your hand
1
We all agree this card is horrible, and would still be horrible at 4 mana. The interesting question for me is:
How strong would this card have been at 3 mana?
I've heard some people say that would have made it insane, but I doubt it. We've seen plenty of cards before that have potentially infinite value:
Anub'arak
Malorne
The Skeleton Knight
Explorer's Hat
It was argued for all of these that in slow enough control matches, they would be insane. It didn't pay off for any of them, even Malorne which has good stats for it's mana without the effect is unplayable.
This weapon at 3 mana has terrible 'normal' stats for it's mana, compared to Fiery War Axe or even the unplayed King's Defender. So for Tentacles for Arms to be worth it, the replay-value at 3 mana would have to be so insane that you would want to play a crappy card for 3 mana over and over again. The problem is that the further along you get in the game, the weaker 2 attack becomes. If you replay this card for the first time at 6 or 7 mana, you're already facing either an aggro board that makes taking face damage very painful indeed and a tempo loss even more so, or a fellow control board that has no reason to be full of 2 HP targets. Everyone who has played rogue without weapon buffs knows how weak a low attack weapon is in a control match-up. On top of that, equipping this weapon stops you from playing stronger ones, since unlike the infinite value minions mentioned above, you can only have one weapon equipped at a time.
In short, at 3-mana this stronger but more expensive rogue hero power for a class that has little synergy with it and indeed has anti-synergy because of the other weapons it uses, would still be too weak to become a staple card.
At 4 mana, it would just be stupidly useless.
At 5 mana, I doubt this will get an arena rating of over 10/100.
1
Twelve 12-win decks
I had a lot of time to play this month and did 100 runs aiming for a 70% record over that amount of runs. I barely made it with a 70.4% winrate. Here are all twelve 12-win decks that I got in those 100 runs since december 30th: 2 rogues (including a 12-0); 2 paladins; 5 mages (including a 12-0); 2 warlocks and a druid.
Some things to note across those decks:
4
There is one additional reason that The Skeleton Knight is bad. It is because when Blizzard introduce new mechanics, they tend to err on the side of caution. To understand why, we need to understand Blizzard's core philosophy on how cards should 'feel':
Given that Blizzard doesn't want to change cards unless they have to, they are faced with the question: which is worse, a card that completely distorts the meta because it is too powerful in the right deck, or a card that doesn't get played? Looking at the effect of cards where they ended up on the wrong side of that equation like Undertaker, Grim Patron and arguably Mysterious Challenger or Mad Scientist, it is not surprising that they go for the safer option.
More importantly, a weak card that is interesting enough to experiment with does something else: it gives Blizzard information about how strong a mechanic is when used in real decks and how fun it is to play with. For example, the generally weak Gang Up provided information on the power of shuffling cards into a deck, a mechanic now seen in more playable cards like Entomb and Forgotten Torch. Similarly, Far Sight showed that Unstable Portal could be as cost efficient as it is without being broken.
In fact, the same thing is going on with new cards now. Cards like Explorer's Hat, Excavated Evil and Curse of Rafaam have likely been balanced conservatively, because they potentially do something new and insane. However, introducing them now gives Blizzard a chance to see the effect of the cards in many thousands of games and collect a ton of statistics. These in turn allow them to design possible future cards using similar mechanics in the secure knowledge that they won't break the game.
4
Both decks can be powerful, both decks play for the late game and have long games and both decks involve having a fairly large hand size and managing your resources well. I would say the three main differences are:
In summary, I would say that control warrior is a more reliable and flexible deck that has remained a strong force in almost any meta because of its powerful defensive and removal tools and fairly straightforward power plays. Freeze mage meanwhile is a deck that has a more unconventional playstyle and the potential to be more overwhelmingly powerful in the right meta, but one that has more counters and less consistent match-ups, making it more of a meta call. If you're looking for something new and interesting to play that is a truly different experience from midrange paladin, then freeze mage is the deck for you. If you're looking for a second reliable high quality control deck that is closer to what you know, control warrior is the deck of choice.
1
Meanwhile, shaman overload cards give:
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.
1
I have been wanting to do this for a while, so I figured might as well do it here: I made a quick program that simulates hearthstone games played and determines, starting from rank 3 1-star how likely you are to drop to rank 6 and ragequit before hitting legend, and if you do hit legend without giving up in frustration, how many games it takes. See the (Fairly ugly) python script in the spoiler.
# This program simulates hearthstone games with given base winrate and determines number of games to legend starting from rank 3 1-star
import random
rankFiveWinrate = 0.55 #55% chance to win games at rank 5
runs = 0 #how often we've run the simulation to get to legend
games = 0 #how many games were played on this climb to legend
stars = 11 #starting stars with rank 5 0-stars being zero: we start at rank 3 1-star
averageGames = 0 #tracks how many games on average it took to get to legend when we didn't drop below rank 5 first
wins = 0 #tracks how many climbs got us to legend before dropping to rank 6
fails = 0 # tracks how many climbs dropped us to rank 6 before getting legend
#play one game and determine win(True) or loss(False) based on winrate
def gameWin():
winrate = rankFiveWinrate - ( int(stars/5) ) / 100 #winrate is reduced by 1% for each rank above 5
result = random.random()
if result <= winrate:
return True
else:
return False
#check if we have reached legend or rank 6
def gamesLeft():
if stars == 25:
return False
if stars == -1:
return False
else:
return True
while runs < 100000: #repeat the climb to legend this number of times
while gamesLeft():
if gameWin(): #gain a star on a win
stars += 1
else: #loose a star on a loss
stars -= 1
games += 1 #add a game played either way
if stars == 25: #if we hit legend, record a win and adjust average games to legend
if wins == 0:
averageGames = games
else:
averageGames = ((averageGames * wins) + games) / (wins + 1.0)
wins += 1
if stars == -1: #if we dropped to rank 6, record a failure
fails += 1
runs += 1
games = 0
stars = 11
#display results
print(wins, " wins")
print(fails, " fails")
print(averageGames, "average games on winning runs")
Some quick results:
Starting from rank 3 with 1 star, if you have a 55% winrate at rank 5 (going down to 51% at rank 1) you can expect to drop down to rank 6 before hitting legend 17% of the time. For the other 83% of climbs, you will play an average of 180 games before getting there.
If you have a 60% winrate at rank 5, dropping to 56% at rank 1, you will get to legend from rank 3 before dropping to rank 6 98.6% of the time and will only take a bit over 93 games on average.
Get that winrate up to 70% (66% at rank 1) and you are basically guaranteed to hit legend without dropping down to rank 6 (over 99.99% chance) and it will only take you an average of 41 games.
Think about that though: even with an insane winrate of over 2 wins per loss, it will still take more than 40 games to get those 14 stars. So I can only echo what everyone else has said: it is a grind.