Looks like there are more changes on the way – TempoStorm discusses many of them here and also has a link to the interview with Ben Brode (note that the interview is long and tedious and full of non-answers and buzz words).
Brode said they are also considering changes to Wild as well as changes to some of the original Basic cards yet again … and it looks like there will be an Arena leaderboard starting in February – Hafu is already playing arenas to claim a spot on it.
I’m looking forward to Arenas changes, though I doubt I’d ever hit a top 100 list. Especially if I’d need to do 30 runs in a month to even be considered.
At this point I’d love something as small as an ‘Arena Rank’ portrait to display to my friends list. It is somewhat silly to display my Rank 20 - 15ish portrait, just because I’m spending most of my time in Arena. Highest key earned that month would be easiest, or maybe something new based on your average win/run that month.
In personal Arena news, I broke my dozenish run slump with my 2nd Warlock 12-win. That had no real 3 drops. I did manage to get 2 Kazakus from my Kabal Courier and 2 Mal’Ganis, 1 Jaraxxus from my Kabal Trafficker over the run. I so have to talk myself into crafting Kazakus, I’m just not sure how Highlander decks will do once Reno rotates out.
So I’m in an arena match. I’m up against a warlock that has 4 hp, and I have 26. I have a polymorph: boar in my hand. He has a decent board but no taunts. I ping his hero so he has 3 HP. He attacks face, gets me down to about 18 hp. Now… if I draw any minion in my deck, I polymorph: board it, hit his face, game over. Or if I draw any of my like 6 direct damage spells (frostbolt, fireball, firestorm portal) I finish him. I draw… duplicate. I ping him, he has 2 hp. He attacks face, gets me down to 8 hp. He has 2 hp. I draw… another duplicate. At this point I had like 18 cards left in my deck, and the only two cards that wouldn’t allow me to kill him were the two duplicate cards. And I drew them both in a row. Any other card would’ve won it.
About a 0.5% chance (one out of 200) I draw that way.
Anyway, I think I may have hit the pity timer and I actually got Aya Blackpaw. Which would be a great draw if there were any jade decks that worked.
Has anyone here had any luck with face hunter in arena? Kripp thinks hunter is possibly the best class, and keeps going 10+ wins with it whenever he picks it. I cannot replicate this for the life of me. My hunter decks rarely go 3 wins.
I just had a match where a one time hit to the face of the opponent by Whickerface Burnbristle, combined with Aucherai Soulpriest (I knew it would do -2 to me, but I was executing fatal, so it was no big deal), led to the expected -2 to my hero, but then it just kept going until I was destroyed. I went from 20 to 0 in -2 increments. This clearly should not have happened, yet somehow it did. So is it possible the opponent somehow hacked the game to make me lose when I was executing fatal?
Not a hack, just a weird interaction with soulpriest. If a minion does a “heal on damage”, and the heal causes damage because of AS, then the minion will try to heal again, which will cause damage again, ad infinitum until you die.
Not really a problem with the game - everything behaves as it ought to according to the rules. (x does damage, then because it did damage, it tries to heal you for 2. But whoops because of auchenai it does damage again. This triggers its ability again. Whoops.) For some arguably broken interactions, look up some youtube videos of weasel tunneler some time.
The card says “damage dealt by this minion also heals your hero”. Under no reasonable interpretation of those words, even when combined with the Soulpriest’s “restore health now do damage” does it mean “will continue to do this until you’re dead”. Given the clear language of the cards , it is not predictable in the least. Shame on me for not knowing what would happen before hand, but let’s not pretend this was some kind of foreseeable outcome based on the wording of the cards.
So when you have an Auchenai Soulpriest out, the substitution effect on that card makes the text of Mistress of Pain effectively read: “Whenever this minion deals damage, deal that much damage to your hero.” And since dealing damage to your hero is dealing damage, it triggers the effect again.
And I understand the logic of it now that it happened to me. But, in all honesty, did you know before it became an issue with Mistress of pain or before it happened to you? Did you, before you found out, say to yourself “why, of course that combination would lead to death”?
Nah, but it does make sense in retrospect and wacky combinations (even deadly ones) like that are part of the genre. (On the other hand, some of the interactions with Djinni of Zephyrs are super dumb and awful even once you know the logic. Eg. if you have a Djinni of Zephyrs in play and cast entomb on something, your djinni also gets entombed.)
I mean, I knew this when Mistress of Pain was released, like… checks wiki geez. GVG huh. It’s been a while. Spawned a lot of hillarious videos when it was released, too.
It’s not a commonly seen interaction, but it works perfectly as explained. “whenever”.
Got bored playing against the same 5 decks in Ranked, so I’m trying my hand out at Arena. Which I always hated because it seems every time I pick a kind of deck to build early in the selection process (Jade, Mech, etc.), I get one that synergizes and none others.
I learned one thing. Abyssal Enforcer is just sick. Like Game Breaking sick. Like even better than Flamestrike sick.
I checked out a couple tier card lists, and, from my brief perusal, it seems to be the highest rated card in Arena play.
Yeah, you don’t build an arena deck for type-based synergies, that’s never going to work. You just build it for a good curve, solid minions, and whatever removal and AOE you can muster.
It’s definitely worth pursuing synergies as they pop up (like grab a mad bomber after you picked an acolyte of pain), but you should never have a particular goal with a deck like that.
Well it depends. Any optimal deck for Rogue, Shaman or Warrior (except heavy control warrior) will have Patches in it. Any deck for these 3 classes that don’t have Patches is just objectively worse than it should be.
Can it work? It definitely can - I’m still running a crusher Shaman that doesn’t have Patches, and I’m still getting wins. But it’s not optimal, and certainly aggro/jade Shaman is better. Any Jade shaman will just be better with the pirate package, given Jade Shaman’s tools.
Maybe I should craft Patches. I feel like he’s kinda lame, but then I don’t like only being able to build a couple of viable decks. I’m nowhere close on dust - sitting around 500. I’d have to dust my beloved golden Jaraxxus (I’ve been sitting on a non-golden Jaraxxus deciding if the golden is worth 1200 dust) or 3 of my lesser used legendaries.
I do have a Skycaptain Kragg that I could disenchant. I guess he’s not useful right now even though pirates are in vogue, right? So he’ll probably never be useful.
Dust candidates are: Kragg, Cenarius, Dreadscale, Velen, Al’Akir, Cho’Gall, Saraad, Hogger Doom of Elwynn. Which one of those do you think is probably least useful?
Kragg, Dreadscale for sure - I wouldn’t miss those 2. Not even fun to play (Kragg is pretty trolly tho). Plus, they are rotating out of standard this year.
Of the rest, probably Cho’Gall and Hogger. Potentally powerful in the new expansions, and they have a year to go.
The rest are classics or niche, deck enabling cards, so I would keep those.
Personally, I’m 50% sure Patches will get nerfed (and 100% on either Patches or Small Time Buccaneer getting nerfed) before all things are said and done, so crafting Patches might not be a net loss either way.
All the good meta decks have patches in it. It’s very powerful. Even Miracle Rogue runs Patches. It singlehandedly makes Rogue playable, and even Dragon Warrior uses it. TempoStorm Meta Report says Tier 1 is Aggro Shaman, Jade Shaman, Pirate Warrior, and then Reno Mage and Renolock. So 3 patches decks and 2 reno decks (and the reno decks are only there because they prey on aggro decks).
In Tier 2 we have Patches Miracle Rogue, Patches Control Warrior (!!!) and Dragon Priest which again preys on Patches decks.
So yeah. Craft patches if you want to be competitive. I did - best craft this season.
Wait, does the game let you disenchant legendaries you get from adventures now? I have the disenchant option for all the legendaries included in adventures like finley, thaurissan, reno, etc. Has it always been like this? I thought you couldn’t craft or dust legendaries you get from adventures.
Edit: Yeah, I dusted Majordomo Executus. WTF? I’ve never heard anyone talking about dusting using legendaries from adventures or anything.
