Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft

Some of the class legendaries are pretty cool. Like Bolvar Fordragon.

Sneed is pretty slow, Dr Boom is pretty much good in any non-rush deck.

Re: Dr. Boom/Sneed's old Shredder

Everyone seems to agree that Dr. Boom is OP, while it's not as clear with Sneed's.

Sneed's is amazing when it works, but it is slow and doesn't have a lot of impact on the game. The reason Sneed's is used is because Control Warrior is popular. The theory is that Sneed's is a big enough threat that the Warrior has to use removal on it, and hopefully use more removal on whatever Sneed's spawns. But Sneed's is slow, both due to it's mana cost and due to not doing anything on the turn it's played.

Dr. Boom is much more forgiving, because it sits at 7 mana, which is a slot that generally is more forgiving. Playing a card at 7 mana doesn't really have to win you the game (but playing Dr. Doom most likely will win you the game), while playing a card at 8 or more mana should win you the game.

I think that right now playing Sneed's is worth it, but I have to compare it to Ysera. Ysera is, in theory, amazing, but in practice way to slow and way to easy to deal with. This makes Ysera unplayable. I can see Sneed's ending up like this really soon when the meta shifts away from Handlock and Control Warrior.

Basically; what I'm trying to say is that including Sneed's is a meta call similar to including The Black Knight or Harrison Jones. Great cards, but you may find that they are simply not worth the deck slot. I would definitely hold onto Sneed's if you pull it from a pack, but I wouldn't craft it if you're low on dust.

But you cannot go wrong with Dr. Boom. If you craft it, you have an amazing card, and if or when they nerf it, you get your full dust back.

Wow. Losing to sudden Deathwing is super frustrating.

I find losing to sudden anything pretty frustrating.

I am frustrated a lot :(

Sudden losses are the one thing I wish they would tune down.

I don't mind it. Then again, I play combo in MTG a fair amount, so I usually know that it's coming.

Granted, you can usually do something about it in that game, but oh well. If I want to dish it, I needed to learn to take it.

Also, got Pyroblasted in the face for the first time. Was at 14 health and it made me damn near shit myself. Still won but just barely.

Priest and Mage are the two classes that work out best for me right now. Lot of fun, as well.

I've rarely seen Pyroblast not used as a finisher, and if they still used it on your face it's almost always a waste.

Yeah I felt the same way when I realized I survived. However I can somewhat understand it - they weren't going to win by removing one of the incredibly shitty creatures I still had on the board, and we were at topdecking stage. If they held onto it, then they couldn't play it the next turn if they got something else, and it pushes them back. With nothing else in their hand I figure they played it then because they wouldn't be in another spot where they've got 10 mana and nothing else to do with it.

Another highlight today was playing a Rogue as my Priest and freaking out because they seemed they kept control of the board the entire time with their combos and fearless hitting (goddamn Deadly Poison on Assassin's Blade). My board is empty, they still have the 5 attack dagger equipped, two Harvest Golems and some minions... I never got to hit their face once, and all my minions were swiftly dealt with.

Then I realized I had lethal anyway with my Holy Fire because they had been a little too fearless with their hitting.

edited 25th Dec '14 3:19:20 AM by Saiga

@ Funden: I agree..but knowing I simply dont have the cards to counter it because I dont own any better cards than whats already in my deck can be..the sort of thing that makes you contemplate logging off midmatch and not coming back out of sheer rage.

Hell, a couple times when my frustration got the better of me I simply retired from an arena run at 2 losses and zero wins out of sheer cynical spite.

edited 25th Dec '14 9:30:37 AM by midgetsnowman

Retiring in arena is a really bad idea. I've had so many times where I've started off 0-2 and gone on to get four or more wins.

I suppose Its just usually by that point I'm convinced I cant draft worth a damn and that a third game would just be a formality of another loss >_>

when I start losing I get very negative and sort of assume I might as well just concede on turn 1 instead of wasting my time losing >_>

edited 25th Dec '14 10:56:24 AM by midgetsnowman

If you're bad at drafting, there's lots of tools around to help you. I'm not much of an arena player, but when I saw the announcement for the limited release of Hearth Arena, I just had to do an arena run. The site is pretty slow and sometimes buggy, but I haven't noticed anything major. The drafting tool is like a coach looking over your shoulder when you draft, suggesting the best pick based on the tier rating and your current deck. For example it warns you when you pick up too many weapons, or when you have too many of certain removal spells. It also suggests cards based on synergy in your deck, and shows everything in a nice overview.

When your deck is fully drafted, it shows you possible synergy and it classifies your deck as one of 6 archetypes. It then describes what your general strategy should be, and what the strong points for your deck are.

Of course, this is a fully automated process and there's still a lot of room for improvement. But the developers are really open to feedback, and I think it's worth it to keep an eye on how this will develop. (And it may make me more likely to play Arena in the feature; I got 4 wins with my attempt, slightly above average. My brother got 12 wins with the deck he drafted with Hearth Arena.)

edited 25th Dec '14 2:32:12 PM by iTeruri

Neat. That sounds like a really good tool! Good timing as well, because I saved up enough gold for two Arena runs today.

So, does anyone know if games on a certain system are only against other related systems? Like, if I have this game for the PC, will I be against people on Android tablets in the same match?

I'm curious because I have a new Android tablet and I feel like there might be an average score difference between playing on PC and playing on Android.

It should be from the same player pool, you can challenge anyone on any device really so other match ups should be the same.

The only difference is which region you select. Otherwise it's all tied into battle.net and you are matched against the same pool of players.

Welp, I got Bolvar Foldragon out of my Arena winnings today. Any suggestions on using him successfully? Mid-range? Aggro?

(In other news, I have no idea why I'm still playing Arena even though my win rate has taken a nose-dive with all the new cards out. It seems like you need to get really lucky with your draft and get all the removals and silences you can get your hands on.)

edited 26th Dec '14 9:07:17 AM by Pyrite

Bolvar is awesome in mid-range Paladin decks. That's basically the only type of Paladin I see nowadays, using the Muster for Battle + Quarter Master combo, among other things.

From what I can tell removal has become much less important in the arena, because people are now playing more aggressively. The Arena meta has changed, so you'll have to adapt in order to keep up.

So I tried the Heartharena thing. I kind of like it, but there are a few complaints I have. First, it's slow to use - look at the choices, type in the name of the first one, look back because you forgot what they were, type in the second, look back AGAIN, type in the third, pick the best one. This is especially annoying when it's obvious what the right choice is. It would probably work better if I had Hearthstone on my tablet and Heartharena on my computer so I wouldn't have to tab between them.

I also like how they recommend how to play your deck, but they don't really touch on what you should keep in your opening hand and what you should mulligan. A really small thing, but I'd personally like it if that was a feature.

Apparently we're in glitch central now. I just opened a GVG pack, which had three commons, a rare (Shieldmaiden), and an epic (Hobgoblin). Not bad, right?

So I went to my collection to disenchant two of the commons (duplicates), and I discovered that somehow said pack had given me a sixth card: a One-eyed Cheat. ^note I really don't like rogue as a class, so I typically disenchant that class's cards as they come in, hence why I knew there was an extra.

I'm pretty sure they weren't doing a Christmas special where they give you extra cards, so...

I minimize the browser window with Hearth Arena so that it's big enough to only show the area where you enter the cards. And I play Hearthstone in windowed mode, so this way I can put the windows next to each other. That works well.

I think a mulligan helper is one of the features they want to work on, but it's harder to make so it will take a while to implement (they prefer to work on other features first).

I really hope my latest opponent was recording his game, because this is something that NEEDS to be on Hearth Funny or Trolden's channels.

I was fooling around with a freeze mage variant, and my opponent was some kind of weird midrange warrior. He had Charge (as in the card) and some oddball things like Azure Drake and such. But most importantly, he had Iron Juggernaut.

Which, due to a combo of Mirror Entity and Duplicate, made its way into my hand twofold. I was like, hey, use what you got, and dropped one of them. He immediately top-decked the mine on his next turn, which I thought was luckily convenient for me. If it works, it works. It dropped him to about 12 health or so.

A couple of turns later, I was able to play the other Juggernaut. By this point, I had applied 4 extra damage, so he was sitting at 8 health. So guess what he top-decked again at the start of his next turn? Yep, the stolen Juggernauts had both stuck their mines right on top of his deck when I played them. If I recall the card count in his deck correctly, the actual odds of this happening were something like 0.5%. And of course, I never saw the mine he put in my deck.

In the words of ProtonJon: GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMEEEEE!!!

edited 26th Dec '14 12:14:02 PM by TotemicHero

I've seen some great highlights of Juggernaut mines taking players down.