Octopus Overlords

Oh yeah, that's rare. Warlocks are the king of Arena right now. I think since the last expansion I'm averaging 4 - 6 wins with Warlocks and 2 -3 wins with any other class.

Although it always seems like my best card draws - the legendaries and whatnot - come from Arena runs where I finished with 0 or 1 wins.

As a side note, when I am playing another person of the same class, I always say "hi" a couple times, and sometimes they keep saying hi back, which for some reason I find terribly amusing. Like in a Paladin match this morning. "Well Met!" "Well Met!" "Well Met!" "Well Met!" "Well Met!" "Well Met!"

I suspect I am the only person who finds that funny.

I always say Hi at the beginning of the match, but then sometimes I forget that I said it and say it again. I assume they think I'm an idiot (I am).

I've noticed a new trend (at least to me) where opponents won't say anything all match until right when they beat you, at which point they'll say "Hi".

It's so hard to gauge people's intensions with the limited emote system. I kind of assume they're being jerks when the emote at odd times, but it's unfortunately because you really can't know.

Anyway, statistically I've just always sucked with Warlock in Arena. I don't know why. I presume it has something to do with my playstyle and the fact Warlock class carts tend to be overcosted to compensation for the strong hero power. But seriously, while I don't track my runs anymore I guarantee I have more 0-3s with Warlock than any other class by far.

Sudy Nym wrote: Anyway, statistically I've just always sucked with Warlock in Arena. I don't know why. I presume it has something to do with my playstyle and the fact Warlock class carts tend to be overcosted to compensation for the strong hero power. But seriously, while I don't track my runs anymore I guarantee I have more 0-3s with Warlock than any other class by far.

I was never great with Warlock in the Arena until the latest expansion. But now they have so many potential board clearers and powerful minions that they are really hard to beat. The 6-cost potion that does 5 damage to everyone and the 7-cost Abysmal Something that does 3 damage to everyone are a 1-2 combo that can clear almost everything.

I turn their emotes off, then I don't have to think about it.

Yeah but you can still see when their cursor hovers over their portrait so my mind runs wild with what emote it could be I'm not seeing.

A few (IMO, good) changes are coming at the end of the month:

1) Once you hit rank 15, 10, or 5 in ranked play within a season, you won't be able to drop below that rank. That should make it easier to get to higher ranks each month since I know I often will go on losing streaks that will drop me two or three ranks. That shouldn't be as much of a worry now.

2). Small-Time Buccaneer (changed to one health) and Spirit Claws (+1 mana) are both being nerfed. I didn't mind Spirit Claws costing 1 mana, but Small-Time Buccaneer + Patches+weapon by turn two has been a pain to deal with. At least this will make him a bit easier to clear.

Ralph-Wiggum wrote:A few (IMO, good) changes are coming at the end of the month:

1) Once you hit rank 15, 10, or 5 in ranked play within a season, you won't be able to drop below that rank. That should make it easier to get to higher ranks each month since I know I often will go on losing streaks that will drop me two or three ranks. That shouldn't be as much of a worry now.

That should make a huge difference since you won't get as many people at rank 20-16 who have a much better deck and just happened to hit a bad stretch (or lost games on purpose to drop ranks).

The SBT nerf with the Spirit claw thing stops opening with SBT, getting Patches, turn two equipping spirit claw and dropping Southsea pirate resulting in six damage by the end of turn two. That was the equivalent of a 2 mana Fireball.

Ignoring the bigger news, this week's Tavern Brawl is: "all your spells will cost health instead of mana".

Created a Shaman murloc deck. On turn four I played Old Murk-Eye onto a board of three other murlocs and then played Everyfin is Awesome and Bloodlust for free.

I was wondering what they were going to do with the auto includes of Azure Drake and Rag. Well they figured it out. Those and more will be moving to Wild when the next expansion hits. Basically those cards were costing them money because everyone owned them and therefore had no need to buy the new stuff. I'm sure it's just a matter of time before Classic gets moved in its entirety and Hearthstone moves to a Magic the Gathering like expansion cycle. At least we are getting three expansions this year, I'm happy about that.

Looks like they are giving full dust values for those "Hall of Fame" cards moving to wild without needing to dust the cards. That's nice since I actually crafted both Slyvannas and Rag...

Extra nice if you have a golden Sylvanas.

So if I understand correctly, if you craft those cards now you'll be getting a refund when the new rotation/year begins? So more or less it will be like crafting them for free?

Ralph-Wiggum wrote:So if I understand correctly, if you craft those cards now you'll be getting a refund when the new rotation/year begins? So more or less it will be like crafting them for free?

Right they want to encourage people to play Wild.

Shaman Spirit Claw and Small Time Buccaneer nerfs are in.

Also, only standard cards in Arena. That's going to be a big change...

The stuff in the upcoming expansion looks pretty interesting so far. The quest mechanic is a neat idea, as is the "adapt" mechanism.

New Arena is weird. I can't decide whether I like it or not.

I'm currently 5-0 in a mage run with eleven spells and only four two-drops (no ones), two of them bad. And just got off a 10-3 run with a mediocre Rogue deck with very little synergy. Yet I cratered 2-3 with a Priest deck with extremely high card quality.

Sudy Nym wrote:New Arena is weird. I can't decide whether I like it or not.

I'm currently 5-0 in a mage run with eleven spells and only four two-drops (no ones), two of them bad. And just got off a 10-3 run with a mediocre Rogue deck with very little synergy. Yet I cratered 2-3 with a Priest deck with extremely high card quality.

Are there changes beyond limiting it to Standard cards?

They've increased the likelihood of getting spells and rares and epics. They've also reduced the likelihood of certain cards (like the Warlock's Abyssal Enforcer).

I've only tried two runs since the changes and have bombed both times. The first was as a Warlock where I didn't get any of the good board clearing cards (e.g. A.E., the ones that do 3 or 5 damage to all characters, the kill a dude and lose a mana crystal). I went 0 -3. The next time I played a Shaman with what I thought was a decent deck. Won my first match easily and then lost the next three...

I think I'm going to hold off on Arena runs to build up gold for the next expansion.

Ralph-Wiggum wrote:They've increased the likelihood of getting spells and rares and epics. They've also reduced the likelihood of certain cards (like the Warlock's Abyssal Enforcer).

I've only tried two runs since the changes and have bombed both times. The first was as a Warlock where I didn't get any of the good board clearing cards (e.g. A.E., the ones that do 3 or 5 damage to all characters, the kill a dude and lose a mana crystal). I went 0 -3. The next time I played a Shaman with what I thought was a decent deck. Won my first match easily and then lost the next three...

I think I'm going to hold off on Arena runs to build up gold for the next expansion.

Glad to see the A.E. change, at least. Had an Arena match recently where that guy was dropped three turns in a row, which was awesome for me.

It looks like Lost Secrets of Un'Goro won't have missions built into it, right? Are there any single player mission-based expansions coming?

There's a greater than 0 chance that I was the guy dropping three A.E.s in a row...

Apparently there are supposed to be some missions (I think) with the next expansion. But none of the three expansions planned for this year are of the solo-mission type. So how these missions will work is unclear. Possibly it will be more like the "missions" of the Gadgetzan expansion.

There'll be missions (I think they are solo) but they will be harder than the previous missions which had to be super easy since people paid specifically for them.

Ralph-Wiggum wrote:There's a greater than 0 chance that I was the guy dropping three A.E.s in a row...

Apparently there are supposed to be some missions (I think) with the next expansion. But none of the three expansions planned for this year are of the solo-mission type. So how these missions will work is unclear. Possibly it will be more like the "missions" of the Gadgetzan expansion.

On the plus side, I'm pretty sure that I did manage to win that match nonetheless.

The Gadgetzan "missions" were all right, although I liked the stories of the solo missions. At least, they were mildly amusing.

How did I go 0-3 on a mage arena run that included both Reno and Ragnaros?

Sudy Nym wrote:How did I go 0-3 on a mage arena run that included both Reno and Ragnaros?

I find that how I feel about an Arena deck coming out of the draft has little correlation with how it actually fares. I'm on a Shaman Arena run currently where my deck didn't feel like anything special (among other things, no legendaries, only a couple epics) and yet I'm currently at 7-2. I think it's mostly because it turned out to have a good mix of high value creatures in the 3 - 6 crystal range, plus a couple good "board sweeping" cards, and a couple removal cards.

New expansion available April 6th. I was gonna tell Carpet Pissar that it was ok to come back to Hearthstone because Reno will rotate out that day, but maybe not.

Some of the new cards are pretty bonkers but look like they'll be fun. Fortunately, a number of those combos shown in the video require completing the in-match quest (Time Warp, the pirate make-every-minion-5/5), so they certainly won't be easy to pull off and definitely not early in the match. The wild pyromancer + venomous (er, poisonous) adapt combo is pretty wicked though.

If you happen to be on Facebook, search for Jennifer King Schlickbernd and you'll see two vids of me opening 108 Ungoro packs.

The Shaman quest is friggin' INSANE. I've gone 7-1 with it, and the 1 was with a horrible mulligan.

I only had 8 packs to open at launch, so I'm going to be playing arena for a while. But that's generally what I enjoy most, so I'm good with that.

I opened ~28 packs yesterday. The only legendary I got was the Paladin non-quest legendary (blah). I did get a bunch of the new hunter cards, including both epic spells (one that makes your hero power give +2/2 to a beast, and the one that gives you a random beast for every beast you play that turn).

I do, however, have a ton of dust after the full refunds for the cards moving to Wild. I think I have enough dust to craft three, maybe four, legendaries. It's just a matter of letting the meta settle for a bit to figure out which are the best ones to craft.

Let's see... there's an exploit out that was found by the YouTuber/Streamer Disguised Toast, I don't know exactly what it is but apparently animations done by him stopped the other player from being able to play. Keep in mind that Blizzard comes down hard on using exploits so you might not want to try it. The Rogue quest and Shaman quest are quite popular, and pirate warrior still going strong, although Mage's Tempo-mental deck giving it a run.

Reddit is on fire against the Rogue quest right now, or so I hear as wading into that seems very toxic at the moment. We'll see what Brode et al have to say as I don't think they are helping sales of packs at the moment. For Brode to say they were concerned about aggro domination and then release the Rogue quest and do nothing about pirate warrior seems ridiculous. As a very long time Blizzard supporter and even before they were Blizzard I have to say they blew this big time.

I've played against the rogue quest a few times. Once as hunter and I think I was able to win right as the quest was completed. The other times (as other classes) I got smoked

And I just played against a Pirate who went first and accomplished the quest all on round three, meaning there was no way to stop it. Lost on round 4. Pretty ridiculous.

I'm finding Arena easier than normal since Un'Goro launch... I've gone 32-12, and not with what I'd consider amazing decks. (Could have probably done even better if I hadn't misunderstood some mechanics, etc.)

Reserving judgment on constructed. At first I disliked the quests for being legendary. (Though not as if I'm not sitting on 100,000 dust....) But when you think of the cost as being for the card that's the quest reward, it's more palatable. However, still frustrating as they offer little deck-building variety. Perhaps I'd enjoy the idea more if there were more than one per class. But on the face of it, you can't claim this expansion is poor value.