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Huntn

macrumors Core
May 5, 2008
23,483
26,600
The Misty Mountains
Normally it costs much more dust to create a card (4X or so, depending on rarity) than you get back for disenchanting it.

But occasionally, Blizzard nerfs (i.e. changes negatively) certain cards if they feel they have balance issues. When this happens they allow such cards to be disenchanted for the FULL dust value - a really good deal!

This has happened in the past with cards like Unleash the Hounds, Pyroblast, Leeroy Jenkins, and Gadgetzan Auctioneer.

That's why it can be better to hold duplicates until you actually need their dust to create a new card. There's a small chance that their dust value could go higher in the event of a nerf.

Thank for the clarification!
 

DaveNinja

macrumors 6502
Oct 18, 2005
314
18
I built up my warrior deck like the guide said to and ended up winning about half my battles, so thats an improvement. Had a frustrating battle against a mage where they had a lot of "kill all minions" type spells.

I played some using the Shaman starter deck in order to try and get the daily quest of "win 2 games as shaman or druid" completed. Got 1 win but havent been able to get a second yet. :)
 

DaveNinja

macrumors 6502
Oct 18, 2005
314
18
The Arena is pretty tough. I've only won once out of 10 battles. Everyone should be using the same randomized decks, right? It seems my opponent often has "better" cards than me, like they have rares or elites
 

soulsyphon

macrumors regular
May 3, 2014
192
3
The Arena is pretty tough. I've only won once out of 10 battles. Everyone should be using the same randomized decks, right? It seems my opponent often has "better" cards than me, like they have rares or elites

arena is completely random, some people might get 2 legendaries, others might get only basic cards. so yes some people might have better decks than you.

i suggest using the link i posted heartharena.com
 

Reason077

macrumors 68040
Aug 14, 2007
3,606
3,644
The Arena is pretty tough. I've only won once out of 10 battles. Everyone should be using the same randomized decks, right? It seems my opponent often has "better" cards than me, like they have rares or elites

It's possible that they're getting better cards than you, but more likely they're just better at picking the right cards than you! Try watching some arena games on Twitch, and pay particular attention to the draft.

Hafu is a good arena player to learn from: http://www.twitch.tv/itshafu

A guide like this might also be useful: http://hearthstoneplayers.com/beginners-arena-guide-choosing-a-class-and-drafting-a-deck/

----------

arena is completely random, some people might get 2 legendaries, others might get only basic cards.

In the Arena draft, you are guaranteed at least 4 cards that are rare or better.
 

Huntn

macrumors Core
May 5, 2008
23,483
26,600
The Misty Mountains
The Arena is pretty tough. I've only won once out of 10 battles. Everyone should be using the same randomized decks, right? It seems my opponent often has "better" cards than me, like they have rares or elites

The first time I played Aerna I won 0, the second time 1, third time 2, forth time 3, and fifth time 1. The fifth time, I got terrible cards and was luck to win any IMO. I'm going to visit the Arena site mentioned in this thread, but what I've been trying to do is mimic my other decks as far as distribution of mana, number of attacks, taunts, heal, and add cards. The bad thing is that when it comes to your class you have no idea what of your favorite cards will appear if any.

----------

You don't need to. Everything in the game can be purchased with gold which you can earn primarily by playing in ranked play mode. You get 10 gold for every 3 wins in ranked play along with being able to do a random daily quest each day which can get you 40-100 gold. To play arena it costs 150 gold or $1.99. If you can win about 4-5 games in arena you usually get at least the 150 gold back.

If you are bad at arena but only want to play arena then it'll cost you money. But you can fairly easily pay for arena with gold earned.

I've not noticed any difference in gold earning between ranked and casual play?
 

DaveNinja

macrumors 6502
Oct 18, 2005
314
18
I ended up losing my first 2 arena games yesterday before then winning 4 and finally losing 1 more. So that helped my confidence.
I just played a couple games as ranked. It was my hunter vs another hunter both games. Both times i almost beat him but he destroyed me with "Unleash the Hounds". Is that a card i should craft so i can add it to the hunter deck i'm currently using or should i just wait to get it in a deck? So far most of the decks i've opened have been like 4 robotic gnome type cards and then something like Starfall for the druid.

The minion, Ancient Watcher, is it good for anything? a 4/3 with the ability of "cannot attack". i guess it could be useful if you could give it a taunt using a spell or minion but thats pretty situational. i'm just wondering if i'm missing something or if this is a card i could dust and turn into something useful.
 

Keleko

macrumors 68000
Mar 26, 2008
1,927
2,767
"Unleash the Hounds" is one of the staple Hunter cards. You need it to make a good Hunter deck.

Ancient Watcher is much more of a limited use card. It mostly sees play in Warlock decks because of the Warlock class card that destroys a minion and does damage equal to it's power to all enemy minions. Ancient Watcher makes a good low mana minion to sacrifice because of its high stats. It can also be given taunt to make a tough wall to get past early on. You could also combo a silence with it to make it able to attack, but that's usually a poor use of a targeted silence spell.

So, if you don't plan on making a Warlock "handlock" deck (where this minion sees most play), you don't need to keep it.
 

DaveNinja

macrumors 6502
Oct 18, 2005
314
18
I was able to defeat all the practice classes on Expert today (and get the 100 gold from that achievement) so I've improved in the last week. I was working on Ranked play with my custom basic card Warrior deck and was able to beat a Warlock who was playing all these cool looking Nax cards
 

Huntn

macrumors Core
May 5, 2008
23,483
26,600
The Misty Mountains
HearthArena.com, a site designed to help you with Arena play. It looks like there should be an app, but I don't see a download link. Is the idea that you start "a new arena", pick a class, and then this tool to assist in card choices? Is this site attached to your account in any way, or must you enter your arena choices into this site? Thanks.
 
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soulsyphon

macrumors regular
May 3, 2014
192
3
HearthArena.com, a site designed to help you with Arena play. It looks like there should be an app, but I don't see a download link. Is the idea that you start "a new arena", pick a class, and then this tool to assist in card choices? Is this site attached to your account in any way, or must you enter your arena choices into this site? Thanks.

you go on hearthstone and start an arena run. then go on the site and start an arena run on there, pick the class you picked in game, then select the cards on the site with the ones you see in game.

this takes a lot of time... since you have to alt-tab (command-tab for mac) and enter 3 cards every time, when the site picks a card (after you entered 3 of them)... you select it in the game... and enter 3 more so on so forth.

the site tries to select the best deck for you, a famous twitch streamer named kripp who is very good at arena has tried the site and his choices were about 95% identical to the site, so its pretty impressive.

the site also tells you why it picked the card.
 

Huntn

macrumors Core
May 5, 2008
23,483
26,600
The Misty Mountains
you go on hearthstone and start an arena run. then go on the site and start an arena run on there, pick the class you picked in game, then select the cards on the site with the ones you see in game.

this takes a lot of time... since you have to alt-tab (command-tab for mac) and enter 3 cards every time, when the site picks a card (after you entered 3 of them)... you select it in the game... and enter 3 more so on so forth.

the site tries to select the best deck for you, a famous twitch streamer named kripp who is very good at arena has tried the site and his choices were about 95% identical to the site, so its pretty impressive.

the site also tells you why it picked the card.

I'll go try that again. Thanks!
 

Huntn

macrumors Core
May 5, 2008
23,483
26,600
The Misty Mountains
Tonight I was surprised when I was forced to choose among unfamiliar classes in the Arena. Then I followed the HearthArena.com deckbuilder recommendations, but lost all 3 matches. Then I went to play casual playing my mage, about L23, I was completely and utterly destroyed by a Shaman, in short order. He had killer cards, which leads me to believe that match making in Hearthstone, is not really finding you a worthy opponent, but someone who might just kick your ass with one hand tied behind their back. :p

Very discouraged. I knew this could be an issue with a game where people are crafting cards. There is always going to be people putting more effort into this than a casual player, and if you can't trust the match maker to find someone with comparable cards, there is no point in continuing unless you like courting disappointment. Your abilities are limited to your cards. I've had strings of losses, but never anything like this loss before. That's the end of my rant for tonight. I'll sleep on uninstalling this game... :eek:
 

soulsyphon

macrumors regular
May 3, 2014
192
3
Tonight I was surprised when I was forced to choose among unfamiliar classes in the Arena. Then I followed the HearthArena.com deckbuilder recommendations, but lost all 3 matches. Then I went to play casual playing my mage, about L23, I was completely and utterly destroyed by a Shaman, in short order. He had killer cards, which leads me to believe that match making in Hearthstone, is not really finding you a worthy opponent, but someone who might just kick your ass with one hand tied behind their back. :p

Very discouraged. I knew this could be an issue with a game where people are crafting cards. There is always going to be people putting more effort into this than a casual player, and if you can't trust the match maker to find someone with comparable cards, there is no point in continuing unless you like courting disappointment. Your abilities are limited to your cards. I've had strings of losses, but never anything like this loss before. That's the end of my rant for tonight. I'll sleep on uninstalling this game... :eek:

i already stated what youre supposed to do... do dailies... then do arena... then craft cards, or pay up real money which is the quick short answer most people do.

its a "free to play" game which really means "pay to win".

when you are new and haven't spent a dime, of course you will be rekt...

as for match making... its random on casual... play ranked if you want similar opponents
 

Huntn

macrumors Core
May 5, 2008
23,483
26,600
The Misty Mountains
i already stated what youre supposed to do... do dailies... then do arena... then craft cards, or pay up real money which is the quick short answer most people do.

its a "free to play" game which really means "pay to win".

when you are new and haven't spent a dime, of course you will be rekt...

as for match making... its random on casual... play ranked if you want similar opponents

Understood, understood... But it's surprising that "casual" could equal unbalanced match ups, if that is what I experienced. I was under the impression that casual meant easier.

I don't know how the Hearthstone match maker works, but I would imagine that fair match making would be a system that analyzes competing decks based on a narrow range of card value.
 
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DaveNinja

macrumors 6502
Oct 18, 2005
314
18
I'll have to try out the arena deck picker page when i have a chance.
After running a 4 win arena, my next one, i only won 1 game. Current arena, i'm at 2 wins with 1 loss, i think. Hopefully i can get at least 1 more win before hitting my 3rd lose.

As a beginner, i'll say the thing that helped me figure out the game the most was picking a class and looking up their recommended basic custom deck on hearthstoneplayers.com. You'll still lose a lot, but more and more often a "plan will come together" and you'll destroy an opponent. If you can beat each of the expert classes under Solo, then you're on the right track (and you get 100g)
 

DaveNinja

macrumors 6502
Oct 18, 2005
314
18
Every time i opened up a deck, i seem to get the same cards. Salty Dog, Ogre Brute, Mage Portal spell, annoying taunt bot.

are these just really common cards?
 

soulsyphon

macrumors regular
May 3, 2014
192
3
just answering the latest posts.

all casual means is that it's not ranked... there is no leaderboards or nothing else besides "fun" factor... if it were to balance out the decks... it would need analyze your entire deck... plus the ai doesn't know whether you know how to play your deck or not... all kinds of equations would have to be done which would make your queue timer last more than 20 minutes or something to find a match. what would be the fun in always facing equal opponents? you would have a 50% win percentage... don't you want to get some crappy opponents so you can finish your dailies faster?

as for where to find decks, i already stated this... hearthpwn.com, tempostorm.com, hearthhead.com ... hearthstoneplayers is a lame site... not sure why some of you are glued to it. no one goes there but you guys on this forum. lol. hearthpwn is the most popular site... its owned by curse... curse is semi official to blizzard... all the info about blizzard games gets released on curse sites first... for wow its mmo-champion.com, for d3 its diablofans.com, for overwatch its overpwn.com, for heroes of the storm its heroesnexus.com. hearthhead is from zam networks or whatever they call themselves, they are the second most popular sites when it comes to blizzard... zam owns wowhead.com which is the #1 destination in wow for questing, achievements etc... and tempostorm is one of the leading professional hearthstone teams in the world, they allow people to post decks and the team posts the ones they've used in tournaments or ranked play.

anyways... when you open packs, the cards will not automatically be cards you don't have... otherwise blizzard would not make any money. and this is how it has worked for all collectible/trading card games. if any of you ever played magic the gathering... you could buy 20 booster packs and get no new cards. the system in hearthstone is completely random, but the good side of hearthstone is that the cards you already have can be turned into dust... dust is what you use to craft new cards or golden/foil cards.

the reason i tell you guys to not spend your gold on packs is because when you will eventually get better at arena, the rewards will trump the 100 gold per pack limit... because if you get 12 wins in arena... you can get up to 500 gold + pack + golden card + dust... you only need 4 wins to get your 150 gold's worth that you spent... this comes in a pack, gold and dust.

here's my winnings... i'm only posting them to prove that i know what i'm talking about, by no means am i bragging... a twitch streamer named kripp has over 9000 wins. most of them in arena. i'm defending this game for some reason but i really dislike it because its cards... i don't feel like i have the control over whether i win or not... which is why i just do my dailies and get it over with.
 

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Ardmanz

macrumors regular
Jul 12, 2013
213
23
Silly question.

If all you plan to play is arena is there really any point in trying to get card packs? They don't have any bearing on what cards you get in Arena, do they?
 

Huntn

macrumors Core
May 5, 2008
23,483
26,600
The Misty Mountains
just answering the latest posts.

all casual means is that it's not ranked... there is no leaderboards or nothing else besides "fun" factor... if it were to balance out the decks... it would need analyze your entire deck... plus the ai doesn't know whether you know how to play your deck or not... all kinds of equations would have to be done which would make your queue timer last more than 20 minutes or something to find a match. what would be the fun in always facing equal opponents? you would have a 50% win percentage... don't you want to get some crappy opponents so you can finish your dailies faster?

as for where to find decks, i already stated this... hearthpwn.com, tempostorm.com, hearthhead.com ... hearthstoneplayers is a lame site... not sure why some of you are glued to it. no one goes there but you guys on this forum. lol. hearthpwn is the most popular site... its owned by curse... curse is semi official to blizzard... all the info about blizzard games gets released on curse sites first... for wow its mmo-champion.com, for d3 its diablofans.com, for overwatch its overpwn.com, for heroes of the storm its heroesnexus.com. hearthhead is from zam networks or whatever they call themselves, they are the second most popular sites when it comes to blizzard... zam owns wowhead.com which is the #1 destination in wow for questing, achievements etc... and tempostorm is one of the leading professional hearthstone teams in the world, they allow people to post decks and the team posts the ones they've used in tournaments or ranked play.

anyways... when you open packs, the cards will not automatically be cards you don't have... otherwise blizzard would not make any money. and this is how it has worked for all collectible/trading card games. if any of you ever played magic the gathering... you could buy 20 booster packs and get no new cards. the system in hearthstone is completely random, but the good side of hearthstone is that the cards you already have can be turned into dust... dust is what you use to craft new cards or golden/foil cards.

the reason i tell you guys to not spend your gold on packs is because when you will eventually get better at arena, the rewards will trump the 100 gold per pack limit... because if you get 12 wins in arena... you can get up to 500 gold + pack + golden card + dust... you only need 4 wins to get your 150 gold's worth that you spent... this comes in a pack, gold and dust.

here's my winnings... i'm only posting them to prove that i know what i'm talking about, by no means am i bragging... a twitch streamer named kripp has over 9000 wins. most of them in arena. i'm defending this game for some reason but i really dislike it because its cards... i don't feel like i have the control over whether i win or not... which is why i just do my dailies and get it over with.

I figured out heartharena site. Thanks for your help.

Silly question.

If all you plan to play is arena is there really any point in trying to get card packs? They don't have any bearing on what cards you get in Arena, do they?

If you play Arena you will get card packs. Arena is for on-the-fly competition where you have access to all of the cards that the Arena deems fit to offer. You get to pick a card out of groups of 3 offered until a 30 card deck is filled in. For Arena as a newb, there is huge value in using the HearthArena tool.

If you can win one match in Arena for 150 gold, it's a wash with buying a card pack for 100 gold. If you can win two matches, you come out ahead including getting dust for crafting that card you'd kill to have. ;) Even if your primary interest is Arena, you benefit by playing with stable card packs gaining an understanding of the ins and outs of your deck, as opposed to a constantly having to adjust to random decks.
 

DaveNinja

macrumors 6502
Oct 18, 2005
314
18
I tried using the heartharena site to pick my arena rogue deck. It was terrible. the only win i got was when my opponent disconnect at the start. Using their recommendations, i ended up with a deck with only one 'taunter' and cards that had useless buffs, like a gnome that gives +1/+1 to other mech minions but i had no mech minions. I'm sure most of it is me being 'bad' but at least i know the deck builder isnt some 'miracle cure' for getting easy arena wins now.
 

soulsyphon

macrumors regular
May 3, 2014
192
3
... arena is random, repeat after me... arena is random.

you will get crappy decks, its part of the randomness.

:eek:

if everyone got good decks, it would turn into constructed play.
 

Huntn

macrumors Core
May 5, 2008
23,483
26,600
The Misty Mountains
I tried using the heartharena site to pick my arena rogue deck. It was terrible. the only win i got was when my opponent disconnect at the start. Using their recommendations, i ended up with a deck with only one 'taunter' and cards that had useless buffs, like a gnome that gives +1/+1 to other mech minions but i had no mech minions. I'm sure most of it is me being 'bad' but at least i know the deck builder isnt some 'miracle cure' for getting easy arena wins now.

An alternative is to look at one of those basic deck links I provided (I believe page 2 of thread). Look at tha mana curve and how many types of cards in one of those decks (obviously if you are going to play Mage, look at the mage deck), taunts, attacks, minions, specials, then try to duplicate it. Keep in mind, I don't think any of those deck links are aggressive decks. See A guide to the different deck types and Trump's Quick Shot Face Hunter Deck. I've seen aggressive decks (sometimes called "Face" decks) where basically only the enemy hero is attacked with low mana cards, minions are ignored, and they can kill quick if cards fall right.
 
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