I would first like to give kudos for tossing in the new expansion cards into Arena, nicely done. They did this in the past, and I always found it a fun time, along with a win for Arena players.
Arena itself is, in my opinion, is the worst it has ever been. I believe this is solely due to the increase in Discover cards. The sheer volume of the Discovery mechanic spreads across all classes, has a chance to discover more cards, and produces some of the most unfair wins/losses in Arena history.
The answer? Play around nothing. Play in hopes your opponent doesn’t discover a board clear, a silence, single target removal, or discover a game winning legendary. Mental.
I would suggest removing some of the bigger culprits, but there are so many problem cards, that you would be gutting the mechanic itself.
Bruh. You’re talking about Arena here. Playing around the entire card pool that your opponent could draft is already part of the format.
Now, there are a few exceptions. Cards like Discovery of Magic, or Death Knights getting cards outside of their rune requirements. But how you should play around Discover, as a general mechanic, matches almost perfectly onto how you should be playing around your Arena opponent. You’re complaining about a problem that doesn’t even exist.
Arena is the optimal environment for the Discover mechanic.
You can’t play around Discover, that’s the issue. Playing around certain clears or burst is still very possible, just not ones created by X card, which was created by Y card. Even the X card is problematic because of the vast majority of them.
These cards are at an all time high and they’re dictating matches. That’s an issue.
Literally every single Arena pick is a Discover. You are given three options and you choose one. Arena was Discoverstone before Discover was a keyword.
A Discovered card has dictated literally every Arena game ever since the mode was introduced.
If you can play around it when it’s discovered before the match, then you can play around it when it’s discovered during the match. They’re the same things at their core.
If you don’t like Discover then stop playing the format that is literally 100% Discovered cards.
That is a perfect description of Arena right now. You can draft a strong deck but once you run into the Hunters and DK’s you will most likely lose because they often have at minimum 4 hounds and sometimes more or they make more.
You cannot be that naive? A large portion of the BEST HS players started playing the game in Arena and moved on from there once they mastered it. If you can playing Arena Infinite you are most likely playing in the top 1% of HS standard.
You must be a new player. The people that go above 7 wins more often than not using a deck crafted from scraps in hopes of finding a few synergy cards that work together and patiently grind their matches to draw that 1 or 2 card(s) that go so well with that 1 card in their hand. They are definitely not scrubs. And many of them played arena to get gold for packs so they could craft a competitive standard deck.
Constructed is too linear because I can pick which cards go in my deck, best not play it either. To say Arena is all discovery because you draft between three cards is such a grasp at straws and an embarassing attempt to counter my argument.
You’re allowed to disagree with my opinion on Arena and the Discovery mechanic that is plaguing it, but please add some common sense when doing so. Reach into your discovery pool and generate some arguments if you may.
Also, the top three classes in Arena right now are: 1.) Mage 2.) DK 3.) Shaman. Classes with some of the highest Discover options. A big reason the other classes fall behind because they have fewer Discover options than the top three classes.
