This:
You can open the wings with gold. Just 700 gold to open the first wing. No need to bust out the CC.
How did you guys do this season? I got a rank 7 chest, two gold commons and a gold rare. Nothing playable, but the dust will be appreciated!
I got to rank 4 in a single day with the help of the most absurd winning streak I’ve ever had, 21 straight wins. After that it was like hitting a brick wall and I gave up after not getting anywhere in 30 more games or so.
I finally reached Rank 8 on my last game of the season.
It took me 53 games to go from Rank 19 to Rank 9.
Then it took me 66(!) games of bouncing back and forth between Rank 9 and 10, before I cracked Rank 8 yesterday.
The Rank 8 chest had two golden commons and a golden rare, but the rare was Savannah Highmane, so I’m pretty satisfied.
Patron Warrior is harder to play than I thought, or I’m just not doing it right. My win rate after trying it is pretty sad. I’m having a hard time getting all the cards needed to pull the combo in one turn. And I’m losing board control badly early on even with the weapons. Should I be trying to pull the combo off over two turns if I can’t get thaurissan out on tempo.
I’m trying to add a couple of dread corsairs to slow down agro against me, and maybe have something to put up in front of a frothing berserker or armorsmith to get them out before the main combo.
Dragon priest is pretty cool, though. I run it with more high cost dragons than most decks suggest (chromaggus, nefarian, and alex) and it’s been working well for me, although I’m just starting to tinker with it. I need to craft another twilight guardian, I’m thinking of sharding gazlowe.
If aggro is your problem, the newer aggro decks seem to run more removal, like slams and fiery war axes. Also, against aggro don’t be afraid to use your whirlwinds etc to clear the board. Like freeze mage, your win condition may not be the combo, but rather just controlling the board. Most aggro decks don’t run board clear, so if you can fill the board with patrons (even without charge) you’ll likely win anyway.
What list are you using? Dropping dread corsairs for the taunt generally is a mistake, you want to hold a Deaths Bite, drop the corsair for free, hit with the weapon for a damaged corsair, and then draw with battle rage. A 3/3 taunt by itself doesn’t really do much, and you’re giving up a card draw which is super important. I think this is why you’re having trouble drawing - playing combo means that you have to tread a very fine line. You could play a minion, but often the better play is to save the minion for when you can get even more value out of it (if you won’t die otherwise).
Also, is arena harder or something in the last 2-3 months? My arena win rate is atrocious in that period. I used to average a decent 4.5-5 wins per run, but the last few months I’m averaging like 2.3, with lots of 1-win runs in there. I don’t know why. I seem to get unusually poor draws a lot, but it’s hard to blame months/dozens of runs on that. Did they change the matchmaking formula maybe?
I don’t play arena but I’ve been hearing HearthArena mentioned by a lot streamers. Trump stopped updating his arena list and uses it.
HearthArena’s Impact On Arena
It’s going to get much worse once the HearthArena overlay app comes out likely next week.
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My winrate post TGT went up by 0.9 games a run from 3.8 to 4.7 (and with my saved up gold I actually have more recorded games post-TGT than pre). But for some reason my best pre-TGT class, Paladin, has gotten nearly 2-wins worse even though the general consensus is that the class itself has gotten better. But so far as everyone is saying Blizzard is still match you against players with the same (or similar) record for your run so far. And non of my opponents that I’ve chatted with were every off by more than 1 win from my record.
The game has certainly changed, most noticeably early tempo seems much more important. If I don’t have command of the board by turn 4 it’s much harder to win than previously. I believe this is because some of the new inspire cards really punishing you if you can’t destroy them ASAP (Murloc knight is the best/worst example, I always try to keep 4 damage or a removal in hand against a pally on turn 4+) and the dilution of board clears.
Just matched up against a control warrior. Got him down to 1 hp. A few turns later, he had 1 health and 26 armor. We top decked for like 12 cards before he was finally able to finish me.
I’ve been playing flamewaker tempo mage. I like it. I’ve never played a spell heavy deck before. Requires good opening draws though - for some reason I never manage to get mana wyrms in my opening hand. It can really spiral out of control when you start with them.
Didn’t know about HearthArena until this post. I tried it out yesterday and my win rate improved dramatically. From a maximum of two wins per run to 4-5 wins consistently over four runs. I recommend trying it out.
I think frothing berserkers are actually more irritating than grim patrons when it comes to the patron warrior deck. I just ran a patron warrior down to his last 3 cards, with both grim patrons dead, and I had board control. He just dropped two frothing berserkers and a warsong commander, hit whirlwind for my 3-4 units and his 3 units, and was able to do 16 damage to face in a game I had under control, no patrons needed. Could’ve easily been a lot more damage too if he had a second whirlwind effect.
Edit: I mean, actually, it’s probably the warsong commander that’s the most annoying component in all of that, since one turn kills wouldn’t be possible without him.
I have to agree that HearthArena is very useful. I’ve slowly been bring my game up from a barely 3 win average before I started using them, to 3.8 wins pre-TGT, to 4.75 wins post-TGT.
I’ve just had my 3rd 12 win run (first 12-0 run!). I pretty much know what HearthArena is going to recommend before I input the choices, and I’ve starting to go against their advice for a few picks a run as I get better at drafting, but they keep and summarize my stats so I can see where my weaknesses are. And then I watch pro streamers very closely when they’re in the situations where I have trouble.
North American championship streaming right now on Blizzard’s PlayHearthstone channel if anyone is interested.
First match was Jab vs. Trump and it got really intense: Jab won first 2 games then Trump won 2 and looked like he was about to reverse sweep, but made a crucial error on the very last play by not taking out a Flamewaker and lost the series.
ETA: It will be going on today and tomorrow (not sure what the start/end times are).
I love watching it with the announcers there, it almost feels like real sports. 
It looks like it went from 11 AM - 4 PM PDT today, so if anyone is interested in tuning in tomorrow that’s what time I assume it’ll be.
I have a golden Alex and then unpacked a regular Alex today. Seems obvious that I should disenchant the golden one and get me another legendary. But I’ve grown irrationally fond of my animated fire breath. What to do, what to do…
Patron Warrior is finally being nerfed.
Upcoming Balance Change to Warsong Commander
Change will take place some time next week.
Wow, wow. That’s an enormous nerf.
Yep. Makes the card completely unplayable … for the same 3 mana cost Raid Leader gives the same +1 Attack to all your minions, not just those with Charge.
Typical Blizzard lack of depth in thinking things through.