Hearthpwn

FML, bubbled again this month.  I figured the win/run would be higher this month but I wasn't expecting it to be 6.9 for T100.

I'm sure most arena players would love to see this as well but I assume blizzard thinks it would make Arena too rewarding.  If they did this I think they would have to reduce the gold rewards from the overall play structure as a huge amount more people would be able to go infinite in arena and they would make less money on pack purchases.

Not sure if it's a better card overall than the Rogue epic plant that combo destroys a minion, but both are definitely insane.  Obvious the fact that envenom is a common and the other card is an epic means envenom will be much more impactful in arena overall.

Are they all OP? No, but at higher wins you have to expect all of the broken cards including Talonpriest and Drakonid OP.  Priest is, maybe more than any other class, dependent on the card quality it drafts and the synergies.  Most of the time you face one at 4 or more wins you'll be facing the usual broken cards.

The way to counter these decks is to stuff your deck full of so many bad cards that when they discover something out of your deck it's completely useless turned back against you.  /sw

Thanks Neon, this is a lot of work to put together and you do a great job.  I also enjoy the discussion on the new cards and ratings and seeing different people's perspectives.  Definitely makes me look forward to testing them all out later this week.

A few other people have posted with 5 but that's the most I've ever seen.  GL on your run.  Only 3 2-drops and 3 3-drops.  You'll need to be lucky on your opening hands.

In a nutshell, they haven't said anything specific.  For all we know, this is the plan for arena moving forward.  They did state that they plan on continuing to change the arena format to try out new things and spend more time trying to balance classes and make the format more interesting, but nothing specific and no timeframe for when changes might occur.  I suspect at some point in the future, we will get a option to play wild arena again, but I have no idea how long it will be until that happens.

Quote from DyingAtheist >>

Bittertide Hydra - This is an amazing card. Amazing. Yes if your opponent has 3-4 minions on the board then you're going to take a lot of face damage but...if they have 3-4 minions on the board by Turn 5 then you were fairly brutally losing the game anyway. People are going to underrate this just like they did with Fel Reaver, but this is so so good. Easy 1. Will be one of the best arena cards in the entire game. 

Not sure about partial runs.  I know that in January and February there were some crappy things happening with partial runs, where Blizz counted the number of wins where ever the run was when the new month rolled over.  So if you were 2-0 it would count the run as a 2 win run even though you hadn't finished.  They said they were going to fix that but I'm not sure if they did, or if their solution was to just make it the best 30 runs in a row for the month.

For the purposes of tracking, I would probably only track full runs to be safe, but its possible that finishing a solid partial run today would count towards your total.  Just not sure.

For myself, I don't plan to try hard, but if I happen to have a particularly good stretch of runs (especially at the beginning of the month) I may switch into try hard mode for the leaderboard.  GL to all those that are going for it.

Damn looks like a sweet draft!

After my last update I had a pretty strong set of runs, at one point going 12, 11, 10, 12, 8, 10, 6, 12.  I didn't track carefully enough to give a for sure number but I think I may have raised my best average over 30 to somewhere around 7WR.  Overall pleased with the month but I think I could have been a bit luckier as I had a really bad stretch at the end of my initial 30 so it was unlikely to be erased over any 30 consecutive for the month.  Still not planning to try hard next month just to enjoy all the different classes and exploring the new meta and new cards.  Depending on how things are going I may go for the leaderboard in May or June.

I agree this thread was a great idea, looking forward to tracking all the try harders next month even though I don't plan to.

So much rage!  LOL

I never dust cards but everyone enjoys the game their own way.  I'm not going to judge.

One thing that irritates me about hearthpwn is that they make a big deal about telling you how much dust you would get for your non-standard sets.  It makes it tempting for someone who might not be decided on if they want to keep them.  It's a little thing but I don't like it.

In my opinion there is merit to both sides of this argument.  On one hand, card quality is more important in determining the upper and lower limits of how far a deck can go.  Don't take these numbers literally but for example, in the wild arena meta, a mediocre card quality deck could go 12 wins if you got lucky with your curve and draws.  Right now I think a similar deck would have a MUCH lower chance of going 12, even with perfect curve and draws because it can so easily run into consistent AOE and disgustingly high deck quality at higher wins.

On the other hand, however, the skill factor is still enormous in this game and in spite of the fact that card quality in a deck matters more, it doesn't matter so much more as to result in a 2+ WR average change.  There's a huge amount of drafting skill that people haven't adjusted to yet.  Value is more important than before, but on the other hand you still need to draft appropriately for curve or you will just lose the early tempo game.  While the variance of deck quality may affect individual runs, over a larger sample size like 50+ runs, the more skilled players who are able to adapt their strategies to the new meta will consistently have high win rates just like they did in the Wild meta.  Take a look at the leader boards when they are released for March and see how big a different there is, especially excluding the top 10 players.  In my opinion, if you are experiencing a large decline in the wins per run compared with pre 7.1 patch, then you need to make changes to your drafting and play style, rather than take the easy option of just complaining that the new arena makes it impossible to do well.

Quote from neonangel >>

Quote from Toxibrah >>

Are you rating Hemet as tier 5?

I think you will regret that. Hemet removes all your bad top decks from your deck. And as Fatique is close to Irrelevant in Arena, it is basically a slightly worse statted Boulderfist. Which ensures that all your draws are decent too great.

 The reason I rate it so low is because it is going to burn a good portion of spells (definitely all your secrets), and anything to fill out late game plays.  You can expect it to trash at least half of your deck.  Typically you want to be able to cast more than one thing a turn and this guy ensures that you'll never be able to cast more than two spells/minions a turn (nothing in your deck will cost less than 4 mana).  Often times you will only get to play 1 card a turn.  Sure, you may have larger minions, but if you can't keep up with your opponent in production or if he kills the one large minion you play, he will likely be able to run over you.  Unless you've drafted a specific type of deck to take advantage of this, then he seems more like a Constructed card to me.