So I returned to playing standard late last year, got bored playing on the ladder last month and thought I would try the new arena . I was once a pretty decent arena player, averaging about 5 wins, but i hadn’t played since 2019 or so. I got my seven wins in the “traditional area”, tried arena underground, got three 1-3’s and went back to farming the “traditional” arena. This is going fine with a bunch of 5 wins but is rather unsatsifying. Some thoughts:
Overall, I like the legendaries with the curated picks. Blizzard has struggled for a long time about what to do with legendaries in arena and this is as good a solution as any so far. It does create potential balance problems and there will likely be some more unfun things like Zephrys and his three wishes, but there is pretty good variety in these and balance isn’t terrible as far as I can tell.
I don’t like the redrafting in underground. It makes the decks too strong, and I strongly suspect it makes it much harder to get out of the 1-3 win zone. Basically, your 1-2 win deck that hasn’t redrafted can be playing against a deck that has had a redraft or two, and, on average, you’re going to lose. I suspect it takes a really good deck/good play to go 3-0
Two tickets must discourage folks from spending the time to get good at the new arena. It certainly discouraged me
The player base seems much, much stronger in underground arena. Not really surprising but the contrast is pretty amazing
Lastly, I wish the “traditional arena” went to say 7 games. 5 is really unsatisfying. I’m sure the point is to get people to play underground arena, but, so far, underground doesn’t feel like the thing to do if you want to convert gold to packs and have a little fun.
Arena rewards are good; on average, you get more than directly spending gold (1pack +75 dust for 150 gold). As for the underground mode, the rewards suck and I don’t really want to play it. There is nothing I want from the underground mode at all, maybe except the hero portrait.
After playing the arena for a while, I start feeling that standard really sucks. The new expansion is only playable in arena, so why bother playing standard? Except maybe for the quest and monthly rewards.
About the 5 wins and 2 losses, I think it’s okay. I can finish a run in about an hour, so not complaining, as long as unbalanced cards get removed (such as the Warlock quest).
Arena used to be a supplement of standard, but now the roles are reversed to me. I really cannot tolerate the excessive mana cheating in standard right now, and the same applies to underground mode, since redrafting can greatly increase the possibility of such bs.
I agree about the arena awards. If you are just looking for packs/dust, arena seems clearly better than just buying packs (or underground arena). And even better since you get free arena tickets perioidcally.
Offering a Legendary (or Legendaries) in the form of a first pick bucket is probably the best and fairest solution to getting Legendaries in a draft, provided they did a better job balancing the buckets. There are so many awful buckets that it’s easy to get stuck with a very bad one. They just announced banning the Warlock quest, so half your Warlock opponents will no longer be playing the same deck any more.
I think I like the redrafting of cards in The Underground, but I have not played enough to form a solid opinion yet.
The cost and gold economy for Arena is still quite bad, and it needs adjustment. Crowds favor is completely scammy-scummy. Zeddy has done over 72 runs with 6-12 wins without ever getting Crowd’s Favor. On its current path, Arena will mostly be full of barcode accounts, because normal players will be out of resources to pay for the mode.
Ya, you are hitting the most important points on the head. The Arena badly needs more gold rewards, and the 2-loss elimination really sucks. Too much time is spent drafting only to have a lot of runs (even really good drafts) get unlucky and be over in two matches. A 7-3 format would be much better than a 5-2 format.
You cannot “Farm” underground Arena because you will need to have a deck strong enough to beat all the barcode decks. the barcoders aren’t playing the normal Arena.
I agree about crowd’s favor. I didn’t mention it because I didn’t get that far, but I can’t see how high RNG when it comes to prizes is a good thing. Maybe it excites the same pepple that like the lottery but most of the rest of us want more predictable prizes
Safe haven for people who don’t want to play against bar code decks. I don’t know why a lot of people insist on playing the underground mode and keep losing resources (especially when they can’t even average 5).
i want that gol’dang spectral ner’zhul skin but i know it’ll probably get removed before i can get it because i’m a 3-3 or 2-3 or 1-3 or 0-3 kind of guy most days and haven’t even tried recently
Also, if anyone’s using Heartharena Companion → delete it. Never open it again. Even if you’re clueless about the game, you’ll build 300% better decks without it.
Long gone are the days when it gave any advantage
EDIT: LOLOLOLOLOL just got triple-brawled from turns 5 to 8 and still won. Wouldn’t have happened if I used Heartharena
This guy must have had at least 5-6 brawls in his deck, or I’m so unlucky I should sue Blizzard
I swear some people are so unlucky in general, they should rig the game simply to make it more fair
I opened with Archivist on 2 and the 7-dmg ping one on 3 and just spammed elementals until he died
He had to board-clear every turn to survive
Apparently, it takes rolling a “summon a 2/2 copy” of the 4-mana poison elemental from dark gift to stop this deck, and even then, I’ll get you down on 3 hp and lose because you spent 100 bucks to play an insane deck.
Btw all 3 of my opponents were “asdjiuqeiwidjfsjdfjsdkfj”, 1 warrior and 2 warlocks
I’m taking a break because last defeat was soul-crushing. I’m 99% sure I had to win this one, since I’m terrible in the new arena and I came so close.
Brawl is not board clear tho, it left 1 minion on board.
And he gained 0 tempo by playing 3 consecutive brawls. I think drafting 2 brawls is a bad idea, let alone any more than that.
If you 're talking about arena, there 're much better removal tools like man the cannon, belowing flame, bash and sanitize and maybe some good taunt for warrior.
I’m interested in the comment about Heartharena. I’m still using their tier-list, in part because there are just so many cards I’ve never played with and would like a second-opinion on the evaluation. Is Heartharena worse than it used to be or just less useful with the new style arenas?
I mean, tier lists have always had the problem that objectively good cards don’t always fit in your deck/curve and the curated picks sometimes aim you towards synergy and away from objectively good cards. In addition, Heartharena was historically wonky in the sense that there was always some % of cards mis-evaluated for various reasons. Not too many, but enough to matter.
I’d say it’s less useful with the new style because when value is considered, they still tell you what has objectively the highest value
But we’re not playing unconstructed arena games anymore, where value is king, we’re playing literally constructed decks now
It’s completely normal to draft Elemental Mage slightly stronger than in constructed now (because there’s no 2x limit for cards and because there are 2 redrafts after losses), and Heartharena can’t help you make a constructed deck, only experience can help you do that
You said it yourself, yeah, but now add on top of that facts about constructed decks and botted accounts with random names
It’s just unfortunate. I don’t see how an average player can even improve at the new arena. Arena-only players and disgusting streamers who buy botted accounts already learned arena, and now that makes it next to impossible for a ftp or even a moderate spender to learn enough to compete
I’m perfectly aware of that, but there’s an old gambler inside of me so every now and then I give it a try or two, but always with terrible results
In my opinion, the new arenas are designed to absorb as much money as possible. As I’ve said in other posts (some of which were deleted, perhaps because I hit the nail on the head), many things don’t add up. In any case, that base absorbs all your gold, if you have any, or it absorbs money like there’s no tomorrow. As for the underground arena, it’s designed to attract serial gamblers, perhaps even pathological ones—those who gamble everything on the slots. I’m convinced it’s there precisely to absorb a lot of money. There are certainly wealthy players willing to spend $30-$40 on rotating underground arenas just for the thrill of watching 12 opponents struggle against perfect drafts. Blizzard can only profit from these mechanisms, so it’s perfectly fine for them.
If you don’t need the packs it’s probably not as rewarding i would think. Also i wanted the Skin for a 12 win run. There’s also a proper ladder for the Arena now and they are already talking about a tournament scene for the Arena.
If you are new to HS i would say stick to the normal arena as it will help your play skills and is vastly more rewarding.
I have five 12 win runs in Arena and three of them were with Warlock before the quest even became draftable. When that Quest went into the mix it gave Warlock 3 top tier starting buckets. Even Druid wasn’t that good back before it got its deserved nerfs. Even after the Quest came out Symphony is still one of the absolute best buckets you can get. As a side note my other two 12 win runs are with Hunter which has an equally powerful card pool now.
Tier lists still put Warlock in its own tier, but the % aren’t that far apart, about 2% between Warlock tier and A-tier, containing, among others, Hunter
I wouldn’t say it’s terribly unbalanced, I’ve seen worse…but the fun, oh the fun!! How can any other class be as fun as Warlock with Symphony and/or Sludge package???