I haven’t played Hearthstone in years. Now that I’ve returned, I’ve opened a few new packs, thanks to XP gain and Tavern Brawls and Solo Adventures, but I still don’t have much of a Standard collection. Still, I see I can form a Core deck just by using the default Core cards. I’ve tried that and tried the default Core Shaman deck in Casual a few times. Not surprisingly, my losses outnumber my wins.
Anyway, I’m wondering if you all have advice on how a returning player should get back up to speed. Play lots of casual to finish daily quests without stress? Try the ranked ladder? (I am an Angry Chicken in the Bronze League, Rank 10, bottom of the bottom.) Back in the day, I actually had the most success with Arena, but I don’t feel like I know the game well enough yet to try that again. I’ve been having a blast with Battlegrounds, but the rewards seem limited. (Ranking now is 2600.) I did try one Duel and won 4 games. But that, like Arena, normally carries an entrance fee.
Any suggestions on how to progress?
go wild ranked
standard force you to continually spend $(unless your a big fan and prefer a limited card pool i recommend sticking to wild)…beside…standard is currently an aggro fest with lack of healing(except for priest)
so Standard goes like this
Priest(control heal trough aggro)
Paladin(semi mid-range but they got their early game play murderer…not rly viable anymore since acti nerfed the wrong cards)
Hunters&Mage&Shaman SMOOORRRCCCC
Rogue( mid-range & 32 dmg burst over 3 turn)
DH - Deathrattle & Ilgynoth otk
Warrior - ???
oh ya…control lock is a thing but i simply cant recommend…even for super high legend its brutal to survive with it…the slightest tiny error and your dead to aggro
Wild
apm//otk mage(harmed by rats players(2X rat to keep them in check)
secret mages
glare warlock
handbuff paladin
control shudder shaman
few rare raza priest sighting
kingbane rogues
thats for high legend
druid dont pop too much deep in(rare sight)
warrior also a rare sight
as for me…well…i decided to go back to my reno/zoth priest since the amount of tickatus warlock is nearly non-existent at high legend…also i finaly caved in and accepted to add “wave of apathy” to deal with glare lock loatheb turn
here my deck list if you wanna give it a spin but be warn its not the easiest deck around to play
latest version(july 2021)
1.Silence
2.Potion of Madness
3.Renew
4.Wave of Apathy
5.Armor Vendor
6.Finley
7.Grizzled Wizard
8.Dirty Rat
9.Penance
10.Seance
11.Shadow Vision
12.Zephrys the Great
13.Bad Luck Albatros
14.Breath of the Infinite
15.Mindrender Illucia
16.Madam Lazul…Kobold Sticky Finger…Gluttonous Ooze
17.Hysteria
18.Kazakus
19.Shadow Word: Ruin
20.Witchwood Piper
21.Excavate Evil
22.Mass Hysteria
23.Entomb
24.Khartut Defender
25.Reno Jackson
26.Galakrond, the Unspeakable
27.Soul Mirror
28.Plague of Death
29.N’Zoth the Corruptor
30.Scrapyard Collosus
regarding no 16…i’am currently running Kobold sticky
by default i got lazul BUT if these occur i swap her
Kingbane starting to show up a lot = Kobold Stickyfinger
Bomb Warrior and Odd rogue starting to show up a lot = Gluttonous Ooze
move the card around as you wish
also extra warning…the deck is very vulnerable to Tickatus…your win rate drop by at least 50% if a warlock burn the entire deck :S…he’s played a fair chunk in lower bracket i heard…but at my spot its so rare that i dont need to worry about him
As a new player hoping to progress from where you are I think you can get prepaid battle decks in standard for a nominal amount of money but that still involves paying money into the game therefore still pay2win really.
The 20$ decks seem like a good solution for now.
For wild depending on when you stopped playing you’ll probably be stuck with an agro deck. I recommend Secret mage. It’s cheap and the only legendary is not needed 95% of the time. The only thing you’ll need if you don’t have are 2 rigged faire games and maybe one 4 mana 4/4 that summons a copy of itself. Other than that it’s all commons and rares. It doesn’t use new cards, so your you may have everything from your old collection.
The deck works at most ranks and if you grind enough you can even get to legend with it.
Don’t play arena until you get familiar with new cards. Battle-ready decks are pretty much mandatory for standard but don’t make the same mistake as me and don’t buy Demon hunter one since it has the most obsolete cards by now. The priest seems to be pretty good, hunter, druid. Rogue and paladin cards were also nerfed. So mage also looks like a good deal. Wild is generally more new player-friendly now, since in lower ranks people still play for fun, without the necessary meta decks. But if you want to climb you will need cards but still it might be easier than in standard.
It’s all cancer. It doesn’t matter which one you choose. You’ll be back here complain about x class or x card in no time.
Thanks for the replies. I’m glad I asked, because the responses weren’t quite what I expected – I thought everyone would say play Standard. Anyway, I appreciate the feedback.
If you haven’t played in a while it would make no sense playing standard if you’re missing up to 6 expansions and 2 minisets xD
Evidently not! I just have the nagging feeling that my old Wild cards won’t be much better. But I’ll give Wild a try.
Have you thought about playing classic?
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There are some cheap standards decks you can craft: Tokken Druid and Face Hunter are great decks and can help you climb in standard with ease. I hit gold 5 with both decks and still climbing a bit. No epic or legendaries required.
Argo shaman is really good right now, warlocks are just annoying with their burn 5 card ticatus and don’t get me started with priest. Warriors are in a good place and a solid rush deck isn’t to costly.
Not sure I have ever played enough wild to get past gold. Usually only have 2 stars and I’ll very often complete quests in wild ranked. It’s actually been quite rare for me to come against a real deck. I don’t think most of the decks I’ve faced are trash mind you, but it seems like people who are new, don’t have a large collection or just trying to have some fun. Like the rest, I think wild would be best.
I just recently returned from a couple years away as well. I’m one of those crazy folks who only plays ranked enough to get my cardback and/or complete some quests. I spend more time in BG’s and solo content that I have yet to complete.
I did dust a bunch of old stuff to build some decks for standard, as I always like the rotational aspect of the format. I played M:TG for a couple decades, and got used to the same thing. As far as costs go, this game is not any pricier than if I was playing a tabletop CCG.
If you like Arena, by all means jam some.
I don’t know what your collection looks like, but Wild still has a lot of the same decks, but updated. So people still play Raza Priest, Pirate Warrior, Murloc Shaman, Odd Paladin, Kingsbane Rogue, Secret Mage, Big Priest, and Reno Warlock.
You could easily jam one of those decks and either upgrade it slowly to its new iteration or just bank the rewards to slowly build your Standard collection.
If you really want to play Standard, Token Druid is super cheap and the best deck in the game.
I think classic all the way, zoo warlock is good enough to get you to diamond/legend, requires zero legendaries and it’ll never change so you’ll always have at least one good deck. Wild requires consistent playing, the cheapest decks will still cost you 1600+ dust which is actually a lot, like 40 packs worth.
Definitely wild, more fun, a lot cheaper, and more sustainable in the long run. More variety too. Example: there are about 3 variants of mage in wild that I commonly see. In standard, only 1 commonly seen.
Edit: dont bother with casual. Rank gets you more XP.
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Thanks for the further replies. When you guys say ‘play classic,’ you mean play wild?
Edit: Ah I see, there’s a separate classic mode. I guess I’ll try that. It’s a ranked mode, I assume?
I want to play in ranked more. Bronze to silver to gold etc. but I am currently in casual mode. I have no option for ranked play and I am wondering why its not available. Anyone know what to do about this?
Renounce Warlock has gotten me up to High Gold in Wild.
Theres a couple of options you have in terms of progress but this also depends on your time frames and how much money you want to spend to bypass the grind!
Are you looking to grind enough gold to buy say 100 packs after 2 months? If you have the time to play this a large amount of time then i’d suggest getting the tavern pass when new expansion hits. This gives you a 10%xp boost on the gold train and if you like playing BG’s then you’re happily gaining xp each game you play without requiring any collection at all. Ofc you have to spend the $15 for the tavern pass but that lasts the whole expansion (roughly 3 months) so it should pay for itself easily over that period. Also it’s optional if you want to spend 2k gold (or real money) to buy the bg perks. I get it purely because I want the choice of 4 heroes at the start of game not 2 without the perk!
As others have suggested if you came back after a while out (like I did) then you may find you have a collection to knock up a deck which should get you into the mid ranks for Wild. Standards only an option if you’re completely new to the game imo. I have a sufficient collection now in my main region that I can get change between classes to try and find the most efficient deck to get into Legend just for the end of month rewards. So for an expansion period i’m getting 1 epic 7 rares and 5 packs per month or 3 epics, 21 rares and 15 packs in total. All for free purely based on getting into Legend 3 months in a row. If anything getting to D5 is sufficient as you just get 1 pack less than legend and it’s far easier to get into D5. If you dont mind not getting the epic then shoot for D10 and there’s far more off meta decks in that rank region.
Ultimately though if you’re going to play ranked it going to boil down to how large your collection is and having the core important legendaries. This will take quite a while if you grind for the gold or cost a large sum of real money.
Happy grinding!