I haven’t done it for a long time. Ever since this expansion, I’ve been getting 1 or 2 wins at most. I don’t know what to do. People always seem to outvalue me. I haven’t seen any guides for this expac.
Don’t play it is the best advice.
The bots farm gold to make exceptional drafts, then sell those drafts.
Arena is pretty broken atm.
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Dont play it.
12 characters
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Well Arena being this broken is a complete disgrace. It’s billed as a gold farming method if you’re good. I’m free to play, and I haven’t played for a while. Even completing the rewards track won’t give me a decent collection. This sucks.
When I had three opponents in a row discover and play an active Kazakusan in Arena, I knew the mode was lost.
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There was a time when that was accurate.
The problem is that there’s not enough small fish to chew on anymore, so you’re always trying to hunt sharks.
I assume it can still be done, but the difficulty increased to the point where it’s just not worth it for most players.
If you can stay with it for a bit, the collection comes together f2p pretty well, honestly. You can buy 60+ packs each expansion and the minisets with gold from the reward track alone.
It is a slow start, but it’s actually fine once you get through a few expansions.
I mean are you telling me I’m just not good enough? I don’t know. Like I said I haven’t played in a while. That’s why I asked for tips. But you told me the mode was broken and bots were selling decks. If that’s the case, I can understand a lot of my losses now.
I don’t know. I want to play tons of cool wild decks I see on Youtube videos. I don’t want to be this permanently stuck even if I play 24/7. That’s why I wanted to try grinding through arena. That used to be closer to possible.
The advice is don’t play it.
By playing it, you’re unknowingly supporting a bot system and you’re unknowingly being taken advantage of.
You can’t compete with the streamers who are buying optimized decks. You might still get your 3 wins on average, but the chances of you going far are drastically reduced because of these botters.
Don’t support the mode.
The botters need people like you to keep it alive.
It doesn’t matter how good you are, it matters about how lucky you are and you can’t outluck the thousands of accounts waiting for an optimized deck to your one.
Think of it like poker. I deal you a hand.
Now I deal myself 100 hands and get to keep my best one.
That’s what you’re competing against. It’s not fair, so don’t play.
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I’m telling you that if you didn’t used to top the leaderboard, you’re pretty much going to get rolled because your opponents aren’t drafting in the same way you are.
The system is being exploited and typical players aren’t playing it anymore.
It’s not personal.
Exactly this - they aren’t playing by the same rules as you. They are rejecting hundreds or more drafts to find the unicorn and play that draft only.
Ya, that’s a steep curve without cash investments.
I was sitting on 10k gold and 12k dust when this expansion dropped and I’ve been just f2p for the last couple years. It’s pretty easy to stay up to date in standard with the new rewards track if you play regularly.
I agree with this and the advice to pass on the mode until they do a better job gatekeeping the barcode accounts.
No. Arena is a luck based clown fiesta now. You need to draft some kind of scam deck like something that has tons of excavate or generate the scam by having a deck with lots of discover. Gone are the days where you can draft a fair deck and use piloting skill to take you to a decent average. It’s either draft busted deck off the get go or high roll discovers to pull a busted deck out of your butt.
I was among the early players to talk about the impact of god-draft using barcoders in Arena, and I have continued to post updates as I wait for the devs to solve this problem.
But despite Arena’s problems, it is the mode that I spend the most time playing. With the abundance of super-drafters in Arena it is quite challenging to get 7 or more wins.
For me, getting 7 wins in Arena right now is almost as difficult as it once was to get 11 or 12 wins.
My best runs from the last week range from 5-7 wins.
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5-7 is a lot better than my average. If you don’t mind me asking, how do you draft? Do you look for as much value as possible? Do you pick the classes based on some tier list, and if so, which one?
I am not “averaging” 5-7 wins per run—that range represents some of my best recent runs. As challenging as Arena is right now with the abundance of “sharks” and barcoders in the format, I am happy if I can average more than 3 wins.
For the current dual-class meta, I look for opportunities to pick up an excavate package, provided the draft starts offering some excavate cards earlier and my two classes both have access to excavate cards. Just remember that you cannot force an excavate package. If no excavate cards are offered in the first 10 picks, do not prioritize excavate cards over other higher value cards.
Mage is my favorite class in this meta.
Shaman-Mage is a good combo for some versatility, good removal, and a hero power that can ping. Sunset Volley is removal, a body, and a common finisher, and with cards like Audio Splitter it’s not uncommon for Mage to cast more than one Sunset Volley in a match. Infinitize the Maxitude can be discovered from Tide Pools. Horn of the Windlord deals with big minions and can sometimes be a finisher.
Mage-Shaman gets more reliable value from an excavate package. This class combo can sometimes fall into some good elemental synergies.
Mage-DK is great for being able to use the DK hero power to generate corpses and to combo with cards like Threads of Despair to help clear boards. DK-Mage is good too.
Rogue is decent as well because it’s an excavate class and it can discover or generate a lot of extra cards.
If none of the above classes are available for first pick, then I try to pick Warlock, because Azerite Snake (the Legendary Excavate Treasure) can sometimes swing the match in your favor. I do not like Warlock as a 2nd pick, because having too many cards in hand is a common problem for me in this meta. Demon synergies can be hit it miss, because the number of demon-synergy cards are often diluted by the 2nd class.
After trying to pick a good class combo,
I prioritize reach and AoE removal to solve problems. Removal on a stick (or that can summon a minion) can be quite good (like Snoozin’ Zookeeper, Blastmage miner, etc.) are great for fixing problems while maintaining tempo. I like “Oragami” minions a lot for how effective they are in neutralizing opposing large minions.
Lastly, with so many strong cards in the meta, a little bit of life gain can be needed to outlast an opponent. Cards like Watcher of the Sun, Sleek Skater, and Sunspot Dragon can help classes that do not have easy access to healing.
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Draw up every middle card until ur deck is full.
Retire.
Take free pack.
Repeat until you have 0 tavern passes remaining.
End.
Arena is completely broken. The draft basically decides if you go 1/3 or 6/3. Don’t get a legendary that is not a piece of junk? 0/3 don’t get any synergies? 0/3
Then you play against opponents that have full on synergies, have had mech warriors with multiple mech combinations. Rogues with unending discover and value.
Besides that I actually think part of arena is just “RNG” rigged. There have been too many times either in my or the opponents favor where you get a discover or a draw that is exactly what you need.
And other times where the “RNG” just removes any chance for you to win.
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It’s lost. I been playing it for years keeping my banked gold steady. Now i’ bankrupt and cnat keep up. Meeting the moat insane decks when going 1-3 says enough
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I think they should bring back buckets. Buckets weren’t perfect but the way it was during buckets makes it harder for barcodes to get super duper ultra giga tier decks because you just never got 30 tier 1 buckets in a row. Compared to now where you can get 30 tier 1 picks because all you have to do is get 1 of your 3 cards in pack to be a tier 1 instead of all of them.
While trying to clear some event quests, I just had a DK-Mage Arena deck go 7-3, which is the best run I had this week.
I wish we could copy Arena deck lists, so that it was easy post the deck for discussion. It seems like that’s something should be a “no-brainer” inclusion to the game, but the devs have yet to include it into the game, despite having me around to come up with good ideas for them, and the fact that I have been making this suggestion for years.
My last largest contribution was to suggest a game mode like Twist—my suggestion even include the word twist—but they have mostly messed up that concept to point where I have not even been playing the mode that I proposed.
Let me digress further, by saying that I am sitting on an idea for a HS mode that could probably the best new format since the introduction of BGs, but I do not want to give it to this batch of devs, because I don’t trust them to do it right.
Anyways, back to my recent good Arena deck and run. I took three pictures so that others could piece together the deck list, but it had Harbinger, which could help fetch out Corpsickle to spend corpses (along with Foamrender) in order to get good value from Climactic Necrotic Explosion.
The deck also had some more decent spells and synergies with cards like Dryscale Deputy, Tide Pools, Frost Lich Cross-Stitch, Firelands Portal, 2x Sunset Portal, and Under the Sea (a card that I think is very meh, but the deck had some high cost targets for it).
The deck struggled in the early game, but it had plenty of reach and some healing, which could help buy time until the big spells could turn the tide in my favor.
I wish Arena had an option to re-roll like three of the weakest draft picks, because it would allow for more risk taking towards trying to draft synergies while punishing a player less when a draft fails to offer some the synergistic parts.
https://imgur.com/a/IHClLOR