[WesleyC]

Antrax, on 2015-August-21, 22:49, said:

I've spent the past week pushing for legend. Currently at rank 1, yesterday I hovered there since the meta seems different, with legend players trying out offbeat decks.

I've found (especially towards the end of the season) that being matched up with low legend players makes the the final push to legendary much easier than the climb from Rank 5 to Rank 2. If you're having trouble, you might consider switching to a simple aggro deck like hunter/paladin/shaman to take advantage of all the low legend players experimenting with unusual decks.

[Antrax]

Thanks - that makes sense, except I'm not a great aggro player. I've made it to rank 1 4 stars twice already during this climb, so I guess if I keep bashing my head against the wall it'll work eventually.

[Antrax]

Yep, got it. Had a bit of a sad moment when one time the final boss was priest (I was playing handlock) and I still managed to lose due to both Mountain Giants hiding at the bottom of my deck (literally - cards #28 and #29).
However, I didn't go on a losing streak, and eventually I got two patron warriors in a row to make the final push.
Not going to try it again for a while. All I wanted was to be able to say "yeah, I'd make it to legend but it's just too time-consuming" with conviction.

[WesleyC]

Someone just posted a really good guide on /r/competitiveHS about playing Handlock. Maybe if you'd just read that first you would've had an easier run to legend

Antrax- Handlock Guide

[Antrax]

Busted

BTW the new expansion came out yesterday, for anyone not reading news and wondering why the server crashed in the evening.

[Fluffy]

it was so slow lol.

I tried an arena rogue deck with those 3-2 combo: deal 1 damage. It was not a success, too hard to combo at the start. You can combo the IV Agent with the coin, but a 2 mana card you cannot combo with the coin unless the board is empty (so you don't hit anyone). It also doesn't combo with poisonous venom since you can kill small minions with your weapon, so no use of the ability. Only combo that works is stab, but that card didn't show up.

Next I did a druid with expensive creatures and justs, it worked better. Sabouteur is great against mage, and the inspire: summon a 1-1 silverhand recruit also had a stelar game.

[Cyberyeti]

I bought a load of TGT packs with gold, 40 packs, 200 cards

147 common
43 rare
7 epic
3 legends

Not sure how lucky this is, but only one of the legends was really worth having.

[Antrax]

So you're the guy who opened my legendaries. I bought 20 and got 3 epics, two of them Enter the Coliseum

(You can expect a legendary once every 20 packs, so this is slightly above average. On the other hand, you got an average of 87 dust per pack and you can expect a little over 100)

[Cyberyeti]

Antrax, on 2015-August-25, 03:08, said:

So you're the guy who opened my legendaries. I bought 20 and got 3 epics, two of them Enter the Coliseum

(You can expect a legendary once every 20 packs, so this is slightly above average. On the other hand, you got an average of 87 dust per pack and you can expect a little over 100)

I got a couple of gold cards so that upped my dust a bit, I tend to dust gold cards if I have enough non gold versions.

Legendaries

Varian Wrynn
Eydis Darkbane
Skycap'n Kragg

Epics

Enter the coliseum
Beneath the grounds
Elemental destruction
Charged hammer
Garrison commander
Master of ceremonies
Frost giant

[Antrax]

Varian is one of the sought-after cards. Congrats!

[Cyberyeti]

Antrax, on 2015-August-25, 09:45, said:

Varian is one of the sought-after cards. Congrats!

Yeah, but the warrior deck I play, games are all over before he'd get played

[Fluffy]

I had some luck and first 3 runs on arena gave me TGT packs, but only 3 rares and 12 commons :/ (1 golden)

[Antrax]

Did two TGT arena runs, very poor results (in part due to servers crashing mid-game) and got classic 40 dust packs.
In general I don't like TGT's impact on arena. Some inspire cards, if played on an empty board, just win outright. So I lost one game where after my AoE the opponent played the guy that makes 3/5s, and I won a game where I played Mukla's Champion and got a taunt totem, and neither felt very skill intense.

[Fluffy]

The 3-4 murloc caster is insanely OP in arena also. You need to save all the removal for this inspire dudes or you are crushed.

I am also wondering what happens with spells now that there are so many neutrals. My 3 mage runs have been flamestrike-less, while I am yet to find a single mage who doesn't clear my board with it

[Antrax]

Fluffy, that's indeed a thing. As more cards are printed, the old ones are "diluted", so something like Fireball is actually worth more now than it used to. ADWCTA, who operates HearthArena, occasionally posts reports based on data-mining thousands of arena runs, and the latest trend is that removal is at a premium, so board presence (and snatching removal where you can) are worth even more now.
Since some inspire cards are a must-kill, I think the overall effect is a sort of dumbing down of arena. That being said, TGT has been out for all of two days. I'll play a bit more over the weekend, then spend some time watching Ratsmah play in the post-TGT era, then we'll see.

[Fluffy]

There was a time were spells were really rare a year ago or so, but they chanced it and class cards have higher chance. Still the more cards the less you will get the good ones.

[Antrax]

Went 12 with a humdrum Paladin draft. I think it's now the best arena class. Used to be once you hit double-digits it was the guy who managed to build face hunter and mages with lots of fireballs and flamestrikes. Now it's Murlock Knight and Mysterious Challenger mirror all day.

[Fluffy]

The crazy thing about challenger is that... is it going to get more and more powerful with each expansion?

[Antrax]

I think so - even if they print worse secrets, nobody forces you to play them in a deck. So, in that sense, the card limits the design space a bit.
However, assuming we lives in a world with 14 secrets, nobody would build a deck that's 28 copies of secrets and 2 challengers, so there's some balancing point, and it might be that point is close to where we are now, where people run 4-5 unique secrets.

Also, they can just give more classes access to Flare.

[Fluffy]

I though it was eery secret, not every secret in the deck, now it makes sense.

Kezan Mystique is good on the current meta for arena.

I am struggling in arena since TGT my winrate is poor, my average has to be between 3 and 4. Playing with high fever has probably been a factor, but I am probably missing something important as well.