3183

So, wow, tried to come back to the game and…not a chance. All I have is the old cards and 30 gold. Everyone I play against has cards from the new sets, which are pretty important to be competitive in the least. The game isn’t worth spending a pile of cash to get back in to playing shape. And I’m not willing to scrape through loads of losses for a rare win to grind out the “win X games as a Y” quests that I have.

I feel sorry for any new players trying to get in to the game.

3184

Wait till the end of April and try Standard mode when it and the new expansion go live. It’s designed with new players and people like you in mind, and you’ll be given a bunch of free cards for your effort.

I’m on my phone, so I won’t go find links, but Google Standard mode and see what Blizzard has to say about it and the free C’thun legendary Old God + related cards for all players.

3185

And let us know when you’re logging on, I need to get some stars.

3186

Here’s a link with the info, all organized together: http://www.hearthpwn.com/guides/1205-whispers-of-the-old-gods

The free cards bit is that you’ll get 3 packs on login (within an as-yet-unknown promotional period), and also C’thun and Beckoner of Evil.

Standard will certainly be an improvement if you have the base set cards (which will remain legal) but not the Goblins vs Gnomes or Curse of Naxxramas sets. The Grand Tournament will still be in standard, though, and there’s no freebies coming from that set.

3187

I am so desperate to finally see Naxx and GvG go bye bye.

3188

Thanks for the info. I’ll hold off on uninstalling :)

3189

You should also make it a point to check in with the game every Wednesday, when the new Brawl goes live. Half the time everybody is on equal footing because of the deck limitations and special rules, and aside from being a great and varied way to clear out all your dailies, you’re given a free card pack for the first victory each week.

3190

Play Arena. If you’re “good” at the game, it’s by far the best way to gold and card up. If you can average 7 wins, you can actually make gold playing arena and never have to buy /pay for anything. Arena is as even a playing field as you can possibly make, you just need to grind enough gold to get started.

3191

average 7 wins?? wow… I’ll go out on a limb here and say that the average player doesn’t typically hit 7 wins.

3192

I certainly don’t. I’m by no means a great player, but even if I’m a little below average, my average wins of 4.01 per arena (as recorded by Hearthstats) does not bode well for the typical player. Having said that, though, you actually don’t need 7 wins per run to play regularly without spending real money. If you play 2-3 arena runs a week, and also do all your daily quests, you should be able to go pretty much forever. Since there are three daily quest slots and only one is added each day, you don’t have to log in every single day. I typically log in 4-5 times a week and play either one arena run or several tavern brawls (or rarely, a few ranked play matches) to knock out 1-2 quests. You could probably get by with only 3 times a week and do the same, but I like playing enough to log in more often.

3193

Averaging 7 wins is extremely difficult in today’s game. With all of the deckbuilding and strategy resources out there now, the average arena player is pretty damn good. And it’s a zero-sum game, so the average is exactly 3 wins across all arena players. I play a lot of arena (about 1 run a day) and my average is just under 5, which is generally good enough to sustain an arena run a day without having to pay real money (subsidizing with quest rewards). Only the very best players can really hope to average 7 wins.

3194

I have nearly 6000 victories spread across Ranked, Brawl, and Casual… and I’ve played Arena once. That game mode never even crosses my mind.

3195

I’m kinda the same way. 3,600 “General” wins and 180 arena wins, and I haven’t really played arena since closed beta in 2013. I absolutely get why some people fall in love with it since it’s a super laid back drafting mode you can’t really get in any other game, but it usually just ended up irritating me since it leans more heavily on luck of the draw than even constructed.

Honestly I probably should’ve gone back to arena though, for the past few months I barely play Hearthstone beyond knocking out daily quests any more since playing against the same decks is such a bummer. It’s why I’ve got high hopes for standard format though. Taking out GvG and Nax cards should shake things up considerably. Even been making some standard-friendly decks and testing them a bit early. Got a fairly decent dragon/battlecry paladin deck that performs tolerably even now against GvG and Nax cards, and made a framework for a warrior Cthun deck with gold cards as placeholders for Old Gods cards.

The thing I’m most excited about is the (Possibly) triumphant return of glacially slow control paladin. I imagine a bunch of people are going to be playing handlock and combo druid since those are less impacted by losing GvG and Nax (Although if they nerf druid’s combo and ironbeak owl for handlock, we’ll see), and it may be paladin’s time to shine once again by making giant monsters follow the rules and/or board sweepng while having 50+ points of healing in the deck. That was always my favorite deck to play, just became less and less viable with all the strong deathrattles. Eggs, creepers, shredders, all ruin your day when you’re trying to stay alive with sweepers.

3196

I might play between 5 and 10 games a week. Only money I’ve dropped in to it thus far has been an initial $20 or so at the start. Since then it’s been about earning gold via dailies. I’ve found arena fun way to get a new pack of cards + the possibility to play with some different cards on occasion. Typically winning around 3 games in arena sounds about right… an strong deck/run I’ll hit around 5 or so… horrible deck + matchups and it might only be 1 or 2.

3197

Upcoming changes to Basic and Classic cards. I’m happy with these changes. But did they miss any?

3198

I haven’t done more than skim a couple of changes so far, no time to dive in just yet. But, Knife Juggler is still 100% functionally broken. Nobody gives a shit about its attack.

3199

I was hoping they’d go much wider than this, simply because I’ve kept every card I’ve opened for the past two months, waiting to dust them post-nerf for full value.

3200

Not a single Legendary touched. I’m quite surprised.

3201

Good changes to reduce the one-turn charge kills. And to make some of these cards less mandatory. I’m too new back in to the game to know if there are others that need to be modified

3202

Seems pretty solid overall. People on Reddit are complaining about Blade Flurry nerf, and rightfully so I think. Raising the mana and nerfing the effect at the same time seems a bit severe. As a mostly arena player I would have liked to see a nerf to MC tech but I understand these are supposed to be targeting constructed, where it is a pretty cool tech card.

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