Be Excellent To Each Other

I really am having the most appalling run in Arena at the moment, even when I get a favourable class and what I think is a fairly solid deck, I'm doing well to get 3:3 or 4:3, can't remember the last time I went for 5 wins.

I'm trying to mix it up on the classes a bit, Hunters are amazingly powerful if you get a decent card draft but as my shocking 1:3 run just proved, if you don't get the draft and/or don't get the good cards you do have in your deck in your hand, without any significant beast synergy going on the class really is just dead in the water. It didn't help that two of my opponents were priests who of course can heal through the flat 2 damage hero power of the hunter. (Against one of the fuckers I was confident I was in a winning position but him top decking an Ooze and destroying my nicely buffed Eaglehorn Bow put an end to that.)

Still I'm on the cusp of 1600 dust again, although not sure buying a legendary (I'd like a Ysera) so close to Naxx is a wise idea, assuming that the new legendaries will cost 1600 dust also....

https://trackobot.com/

Runs silently in the background and doesn't impact the performance of the game, works on both OSX and Windows, and tracks all your stats from every game

Looks good, but .......... I don't like the fact that it uploads my stats to an online profile. I'd much rather that there was an option to store them on my PC and not also online. Or is there such an option which I've missed?

Not that I can see, i'm afraid.

Not mine but must have been terrible to get this happening to you

http://imgur.com/a/ioToS

Arena druid deck with 4 Innervate's and 2 Rag's




So you can pull this as your starting hand

http://i.imgur.com/97HbRmq.png

To get to

http://i.imgur.com/eDihH2I.jpg

and

http://i.imgur.com/0cuKGrF.jpg

Any hint on how that finished up? Ok, and 8/8 on turn 1 is a bitch, but not unwinnable... maybe

Barely playing 2 matches a day at the moment, have quite lost my enthusiasm and relying on Nax to tempt me back. I have no idea how the top players can do it for 6-8 hours a day.

http://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/com ... ros_dream/



Getting anything out on the board would be good to distract Rag

Reading that thread has shown up something I wasn't aware of. As you get more wins in arena, you get matched up with people who have also got more wins. It isn't a random match up.
That probably explains why I quite often lose the first game, but win the next 2 or 3, and then start to hit the wall. The first game everyone matched has no history so you could be playing anyone. The second game you will be playing against other people who have already lost games...

Why not try another class? Getting 500 wins with priest is quite an achievement, but there are other non-stealy classes to have a go with!

After my lull at the start of this month I've got up a bit more of a head of steam now with my hunter deck, with the occasional games with my other decks from previous seasons.

Variety is the spice of life and all that.

Failing that get a Wii U, they're fun.

Played a couple tonight as Druid, all against fucking Zoo, and lost them all.

Fuck Zoo, fuck zoo in it's cheap shitty arse.

I hate zoo, I really do, I still can't decide if I hate zoo more than priests, that depends on what cards the priests pinch off me from day to day

But yeah as for zoo, at the end of the day if you can summarise an entire deck and play style in 60 seconds, it's probably not that complicated....

If you take any deck out into Ranked you've got to build one that's capable of taking down zoo/aggro on a modestly regular basis, and all my decks are geared towards that. (To the extent that I've got cards in there that are indeed only there for zoo/aggro match ups.) Whilst they can and often do fail against zoo of course, beating one of the cheapass little bastards down is very satisfying.

I'm only playing Druid for quest synergy, but my deck is rather ragtag mix of basic things with the Druid legendary which I actually have.

Finally wheezed to victory against a Hunter. Haven't since UTH for ages, funny how even a minor nerf really takes the punch out of the whole deck.

UTH is still awesome in Arena, and can be useful if playing as a Hunter for your daily quests. Buzzard, Hyena, UTH is still a badass combo at lower levels.

Hunter is still a very powerful class end of story.

The UTH nerf made the class more interesting to play against and indeed more interesting to play, I avoided the class completely when the pre-nerf UTH was rampant, as no other mode of playing the class made sense and it was clearly OP and borderline cheaty.

I enjoy playing against hunters in Ranked, and I enjoy playing as a hunter - lots of cool stuff going on (same as with warlock if you look beyond zoo/hand) and many interesting cards for the class, they've just lost the crazy early UTH play as that 1 mana increase for a UTH play made a massive difference.

Still a powerful class, still a viable class, in both Ranked and Arena, but more balanced now.

Just lost to a Druid in Arena. I think it was his 5th or 6th Swipe that ended it.

How obscene is Innervate? (It just got me a very early Scarlet Crusader here followed up with a Mark Of The Wild, and that basically sealed it.)

Just had this win in Arena to take me to 4:3, doubtless I'll lose the next one though.

If you're playing druid in Arena, TAKE AS MANY SWIPES AND INNERVATES AS YOU CAN GET. (I was already doing that for Swipe, but Innervate seems to work as well although it did nearly lose me one when we were top decking endgame and I'm sat there with a 100% useless late game Innervate in my hand.)

It was watching Trump play a priest Arena run that cottoned me onto the fact that for some cards there is simply no limit to how many of them you want. (He took four Temple Enforcers and said confidently before the first game even started that he'd go 10-12 wins as long as he didn't hit any well put together rush decks.)

Others of course their value goes down dramatically once you get two or even one of them (a rogue's Assassinate for example), but for some cards, yeah, the sky is the limit.

Fuck me, had the 5:3 game in the bag and then 'mis-dragged' for want of a better phrase and managed to Starfire my own minion instead of the critical hit on his minion.

Could possibly have pulled it back but I was so cross, and it's getting late, and I've got an early alarm for work tomorrow (5:20am ) that I just conceded to bring the run to an end at 4:3 - very annoying way to go out though, and no one to blame but myself.

Still, would have had to get to 6:3 to get to the next 'box threshold' and I certainly wouldn't have done that tonight, so probably no harm done - time for bed.

Official Naxx news time!

http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/for ... age=49#980

There is no news.

I have 2200 dust at the moment.

I'm missing some rares and epics I would like, but I think the best value in dust is to craft legendaries, is that right? The rares and epics will drop eventually.

So who do I craft? I think my choice is between Leeroy and Ragnaros really, but who do you have that you love, or really want that you don't have?

I'd go for Leeroy, personally. So cheap and the best 'finisher' around.

I'm on about 250 dust, though I only mulch duplicate cards at the moment.

Last night I went from 0-2 to 5-2 with a Mage, but then 0-3 with a Zoo Lock despite getting a really good set of cards. Just all three opponents had decks geared exactly against me! Oh well.

A Druid also on 9 mana dropped an Ironbark and then two Innervates into a Faceless to get a second. The first alone was enough for me to be screwed!

I suppose it depends on how it would mesh with your deck , as soon as I got a Legendary I dropped it into every deck (at the cost of another minion) but it did not work out that well (and i'm still coming to terms with the Prophet Velen legendary fitting into my existing priest deck but might have managed to get the right balance now).

If i could have any legendary I would either pick Rag or Ysera

That would be a long way off for me - I'm about 180 dust and about 400 gold at the moment and I've only dusted dupes

I think Raggy is probably the best all-rounder as a legendary, there are very few decks he won't fit into nicely, and if he's not dealt with quickly he can wreak havoc. At the very least you always get 8 damage out of him. (Plus if you silence him you've got an 8/8 on the board to attack directly with.)

Ysera I like but she can be a bit slow to get going and not a 'game crusher' IMO, she's similar to Jaraxxus in that without a couple of turns to play the cards she generates, her net effect on a game can be damn near zero. (Unless you get Ysera Awakens, which is a one in five chance.)

Leeroy is an appealing card but he'd need a bit more deck synergy going on IMO.

If there are some epics or rares that you really want for a specific purpose then I wouldn't worry too much about spending the dust on them instead, legendaries are fab, of course, but not the be all and end all. Off the top of my head none of my decks run with more than three, and one of them is a Cairne who's basically just an improved Boulderfist and conveniently immune to priests' Shadow Word cards.

It's very annoying when you get killed by the client fucking up. It's not very good at handling a connection with a high ping it seems. But rather than not letting you play a game, it lets you play, but every other move it stops you being able to do anything at all until the countdown timer starts , you then get one action and then it stops you doing anything else until the timer runs out...

I'm downloading the BF4 DLC on my ps4 at the moment, which is what i'm assuming is causing the issue (and don't get me started on the inability to set a download speed limit or pause a download on the PS4...), but a better way of handling it would be nice. At least it wasn't an arena run.

What speed is your broadband? We've got god knows how many devices on our network and the connection really does get thrashed sometimes, but I've never had that problem. In fact come to think of it I've had Steam totally maxing out on a download on my PC, whilst playing Hearthstone at the same time on the same PC.

Even then ping/latency shouldn't ever get that ruinous for Hearthstone anyway?

Can't you QOS stuff on your router if it's causing you a problem? Just make your PC king of the castle

5mbit. It's a known issue with hearthstone apparently, can't be arsed to faff around just for their crappy coding

5mbit? Do you live on the moon?

Broadband on the IOM is pretty good these days in the main but not exactly stellar by UK standards (we connect at around 29-30 down/1.8-2.2 up on VDSL), however when it was somewhat patchier (before they extended the fibre cabs out all over the place) I did very much base our home rental decisions based on how good the broadband was. (And when we finally bought a place, decent internet was in the 'must have' column.)

Even with 5mbit I'm surprised that a PS4 download can totally saturate the connection to an extent that Hearthstone stops working properly, I can't imagine it increasing the latency and/or lack of bandwidth to such an extent that a card game ceases to function properly?

So I tidy up todays quests and have nearly 500 gold and think i'll have one go in the arena since i have not for a few days - start the game and think hmmmm i've not seen that card back before

Cause its the legendary one (Callide)



And I won :-)

No fibre in my flats, which is annoying, especially as all the other streets around have it. They just missed out our cabinet for some reason

Everything else runs fine while the download is going on, web browser is a tiny bit slower than usual, but not a problem. The only thing that gets fucked over by the download saturation is Hearthstone.

Hmmm.... and now it has happened even though the download has stopped and my internet is fine.
After the pauses, the end turn button corrupts too. Which doesn't point to it being a problem my side.

Holy balls!

Was playing in Casual against a Rogue. He had a stealthed Gadgetzan out and a 3/1 weapon, and I had ton of minions, a weapon and all sorts of fun spells ready.

He had 2 health, I was unharmed on 30.

He won that turn. Son of a bitch!

Brought out that 4 damage charge that gifts a mana crystal [Arcane Golem], attacked (4), shadowed it back, played it again, cold blood (8), cold blood (12), attack (16), eviscerate (20), eviscerate (24), Auctioneer attack (28), knife attack (31), death.

Heh. Had a Paladin down to about 4 health. Somehow he ended up back on 30 by the end, with a handful of cards and a ton of legendaries on the board. I'm really not quite sure how that happened.

My stats over the past few days, not too awful!

Woohoo!

23rd for the eu servers apparently, but nothing stopping you trying it out on the US servers, apart from the login servers crapping out due to demand, obviously...

Seeing some funny old classes in Casual today. Just lost to a Rogue that played precisely one minion all game (a 1/1 novice engineer), but just did direct combo damage to win in very few turns (minion got cold blood x2, weapon got poison x2, two sinister strike into eviscerate - game over).

Yeah!

Playing as a rogue. Opponent on 14. I'm in trouble. I have no minions. He brings out a fen creeper and an ironbark and a molten giant.

In the middle of those I hit Sprint.

And then Poison (I have a 1/1 equipped), Blade Flurry, Eviscerate, Eviscerate, Perdition's Blade.

Such a cheap win against a better deck played better than I did. I felt properly bad winning it.

I've come to dislike rogue quite a lot, and funnily enough it's watching Trump's Constructed climb as miracle rogue that's done it.

Whereas with the freeze mage deck I really could appreciate the skill of playing the deck and the constant agonising judgement calls that need to be made, playing a very tight game of brinkmanship in the process, miracle rogue just looks like pre-UTH nerf hunter to me.

It's not as brainless as zoo (then again, what is?), but at the end of the day any deck where you're able to draw 30 cards in 10 turns (or less!) basically eliminates RNG and damn near guarantees a win against a huge range of opponents.

You can sometimes stop it in its tracks with very good draw from your own deck, and if the rogue doesn't get a Gadgetzan before Turn 8/9 the results can be hilarious, but overall it feels like a cheap fucking deck to me - to the extent that I've stopped watching the Trump videos because after ten games or so as miracle rogue I really had seen everything there was to see. (Unlike say his F2P shaman climb which was captivating all the way to legend IMO.)

I'll pick his channel up again when he decides to do something that actually gives that brain of his some work.

I'm not fussed about trying to steal a day's head start on the launch here, it'll be interesting to see how the servers hold up because there's bound to be a big bounce in player interest for the first expansion.

I'd like to say Blizzard's record on this sort of thing is good, but on the contrary, they fuck it up with amazing regularity.

Can't help but feel that the things you despise are merely those that you've lost to at some point, at which point it's skilless and gimmicky and you hate it.

I've beaten plenty of miracle rogues, (and of course I've lost to them as well, indeed I've lost to everything in the game and yet I don't apparently 'despise' everything in the game.....), but when you're talking about a deck that can cycle through 30 cards in 10 turns or less then it stands to reason it's going to be bloody annoying to play against a lot of the time. (Pre-UTH nerf hunter worked on a similar principle of being able to get through an entire deck in a very small number of turns compared to any other class, with that sort of card draw in play, the chance of a win is very favourable.)

If you look at the comments on Trump's miracle rogue videos a lot of them are somewhat negative, as time and time again an opponent who doesn't put a foot wrong is destroyed by an insane burst after a few turns of board control as the rogue draws card after card after card. It's boring to watch and it's boring to play against.

You used the words 'despise' and 'hate', I used the phrases 'dislike quite a lot' and 'it feels like a cheap fucking deck' - so please don't just make things up

I don't think using close synonyms to describe the things you've said is a misrepresentation of your views

I play some shade of miracle although without preps or Van Cleef because I don't have those cards, and it is all centred around the auctioneer. You need the draw though as yes, the deck is based around it and if you don't get it you are likely to lose. Like most legendary decks, you need a couple of specific cards to guarantee the win.

I'd disagree very much about Freeze Mage, there isn't much skill in controlling the board until turn 9. Frost Nova/Blizzard/Doomsayer yawn yawn, Alex, then Fireball/Bolt/Lance to finish. Same old story, very dull and tedious, and very hard to win against unless you have a deck with heals when you get knocked down to 15, while still having a way to deal with an 8/8 on the board. There isn't that much skill in it, except that you need to hold the essential cards for the final burst, and play the ice blocks etc. as mana allows to keep yourself alive until the finisher. Fail to draw the right cards and you could lose there too.

So really, it's just Legend decks in 'difficult to win against' shocker

Having a fun time with a decent Mage deck in Arena. Currently 7-1.

Nothing too insanely good in there (no legendaries) but 2 Flamestrike, a Fireball and 2 Polymorphs can give good control, with a Sea Giant, a Molten Giant, Stormwind Champion and a Boulderfist for punching power towards the end.

I hate playing against Shaman with multiple lightning bolt and storm. So cheap for incredible power. Practically a Flamestrike for 3 mana. Crazy.

Ended at 8-3 with my Mage due to nasty Shaman and his lightning. A good run!

I got:

A pack of cards
200 gold (160+40)
20 dust

Freeze mage gets one Alex, miracle rogue gets two Auctioneers.

If the rogue doesn't pull an Auctioneer before Turn 10 (and most likely earlier than that), it's all over, whereas Freeze Mage can play right to the end of a game and even into fatigue without an Alex, plus the Alex can be used offensively or defensively.

Miracle rogue isn't a totally brainless deck, but there are far more nuances to playing a freeze mage than there are to a miracle rogue IMO.

(For example when watching the Trump freeze mage videos I often had a hard time guessing what his plays would be, or even what his mulligan would be at the start of the game, whereas with his miracle rogue videos I was bored with it after 10 games or so, since the plays were generally quite obvious.)

I have no vested interest in either since I don't play either deck, ultimately I just don't like decks that are 'a couple of cards or bust' in their construction.

There doesn't seem to be much distinction between the number of boxes you get as a reward at different win ratios. Has someone done a handy analysis?

Disagree with you there too Chopley - if the Miracle runs out of burst and you have too much heal or armour, the Rogue gets into fatigue and that's that. Like any good deck, you need to adjust to fit the meta, at which point it's not really cheap at all.

Generally, I think most of the Legend decks are the same. They all have their way of winning, none of which are unfair or cheap because they all have their counter.

Except Zoo. Fuck zoo. Trump made a good point about that - it'll get you to Legend, it won't make you a top Legend.

I think it's every 3 wins, so 0-2 gets two boxes, 3-5 gets three boxes, 6-8 gets four boxes and so on.

On top of that I think the boxes are totally randomised, (with the exception of the guaranteed card pack), so you could get better boxes for a 0-3 Arena run than you would for a 2-3 run, and equally so for each 'tier' above that.



Well we'll have to agree to disagree on the relative merits and skills of miracle rogue vs freeze mage.

At least we agree about zoo I didn't see Trump's zoo climb as he was between video editors and it never seemed to make it to YouTube, but I have heard him reference it in other videos and say it was basically a joke of a deck.

Aye that's what I suspected - random boxes seem like really bad value.

I was watching Trump do just terribly with his Warlock zoo deck a couple of weeks ago - a big string of losses that pushed him to a really low (high?) legend rank. I felt sorry for him, although bless, he remained philosophical.

The boxes are a set number (ish) and their rewards go up within set tolerances. If you get 7 wins you are guaranteed your 'money' back.

Handy guide:
http://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Arena