Hearthstone

I feel Priest, Paladin and Mage are the best. Warriors and shamans to me are just a bit below. The others I feel lag behind. Druids just feel like weaker paladins to me everytime I play them. None of their buffs are as good as blessing of kings and hammer of wrath always seems to work out better than starfire. Truesilver champion and their buffing weapon are cards that druids just don't have compensation for it seems.

Warlocks and rogues are the ones I find the least fun.

I also put priest, mage, and paladin at the top, but I rank warlocks right up there with them. My best record is with warlock, over 80%. For arena, what you need to draft (and then draw into) is a good mix of creatures and removal. removal to clear theirs, and minions to keep your own presence up. warlock has such good removal with shadowbolt, soulfire, shadowflame, demonfire, and siphon soul, and the ability to pump out more cards than other classes.

Rogues really got gutted with their hero power nerf. All the other shit was acceptable, but that was the nail in the coffin.

Druids just do not have enough removal. No sane person would use naturalize, and their nukes are so expensive that sure you can wipe out a creature(s) on their side but then you won't have enough mana to put out your own minion to regain board presence.

Hunters are gimmicky, if you draft cards that work well together they are great, but if you just get a hodgepodge of neutrals, they are hard to make it work because their hero ability doesn't affect the board.

shaman has some really good cards that allow them to regain and maintain board presence, like feral wolves, fire elemental, earth elemental, and the cheap as hell lightning spells. Player skill comes into play more as a shaman than any other class i feel, because their hero power is unreliable, and your mana levels fluctuate due to overload.

Everything I've read always says paladin/priest/mage are top arena.

It's mostly true. They are the safest anyway. Most of their really top tier cards are common and you'll see multiples in drafts (flamestrike, truesilver, fireball, mind control, northsire, blessing of kings, etc etc), their hero powers are SUPER awesome in draft, etc. Warriors are warlocks both seem generally fine as well, but you're just a lot more likely to get dicked in the draft with them. Not a fan of hunters/druids at all for draft. Shaman big risk, big reward. If you hit a couple of their better rares (fire/earth elemental, lightning storm, feral spirit, etc) they can get really nuts, but usually you won't see any of it and just be screwed.

So what's the best way to deal with mages? Any card I play gets killed and then they just do more hero damage and faster than me...

an accordion_sl said:

So what's the best way to deal with mages? Any card I play gets killed and then they just do more hero damage and faster than me...

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I lose to Priests just outhealing and using card draw to always have a response a lot. If they get a bad draw I nuke them down though.

an accordion_sl said:

So what's the best way to deal with mages? Any card I play gets killed and then they just do more hero damage and faster than me...

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Is there a particular class you are playing that you are struggling against mages with or just in general?

mures_sl said:

Is there a particular class you are playing that you are struggling against mages with or just in general?

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In general.


All my mage matches go like this:

He plays some annoying minion turn 1 (like mana wyrm).
Forced to use removal.
He just sits there and kills every minion I play.
Busts out some 4/4's for spellpower, I have no minions to clear and no useful removal for that.
I die.

Guess the obvious question is what kind of deck are you playing?

The best way to deal with mages is actually to play a bunch of minions. It seems counterintuitive because they have so much AOE removal, but if they are spending fireballs and frostbolts on your guys, they aren't pounding your face with them. If you're up against a mage with blizzards, flamestrikes, frost novas, and cone of colds, all of those slots aren't being taken by minions, so they will be playing very few throughout the course of the game. If you can manage to take out their minions with a weapon or removal of your own, and don't overextend into their AOE, especially coming into turns 5 and 7, you'll be in a good spot.

elidib_sl said:

The best way to deal with mages is actually to play a bunch of minions. It seems counterintuitive because they have so much AOE removal, but if they are spending fireballs and frostbolts on your guys, they aren't pounding your face with them. If you're up against a mage with blizzards, flamestrikes, frost novas, and cone of colds, all of those slots aren't being taken by minions, so they will be playing very few throughout the course of the game. If you can manage to take out their minions with a weapon or removal of your own, and don't overextend into their AOE, especially coming into turns 5 and 7, you'll be in a good spot.

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So what, keep like 3 minions on board at all times?

It really depends on the champ you're playing. I feel someone like the druid struggles more against mages than other classes because all their removal costs so much and they have some good minion buffs that you never get to play because mages can clear your board. Weapons work really well against mages for this reason, you have some removal and still have mana to cast more minions.

Make sure you have a nice selection of 3 damage 2 cost minions, blood imps for warlocks, app sorcs for mages, fairie dragons, oozes, knife jugglers, and raptors. 3 damage 2 cost minions are good for 2 reasons, they can kill the annoying minions like northshire clerics and mana wyrms, and they can also trade with most 3 cost minions. Also unless you have a bunch of rare/nice cards you should be running 2 shattered sun clerics and those 2 cost minions are great targets. Allows you to trade up for many 4 cost minions and even some 5's. You may think, well with only 2 health a mage can ping it down in 2 turns, well they would have to spend 2 turns to do that and spend 4 mana early game, which is huge. You can also craft some dark iron dwarfs and get more value out of your low cost minions to make them useful the entire game. If you get a good card draw you can use this to keep up your tempo you'll likely have 3 minions on the board to their empty board around turn 7. Don't play more minions just because you have the mana. If their board is empty and you have 7-8 damage on the board hold on to those minions in you hand in case of blizzard/flamestrike.

I don't have Velen or Rag, but Artosis's Priest deck from the tournament is ridiculously good.

What are some suggestions for neutral rare cards to craft that fit into almost any deck? I've been saving my dust to make a legendary, but thinking about it, it would probably be more value to craft 16 rare cards instead of using that much dust on a single legendary.

2x Argent Commander, 2x Azure Drake are must haves.

Off topic; but if Planeswalker isn't a great introduction to MTG what is? My buddy plays at friday night magic and I wouldn't mind going at some point.

Drtyrm_sl said:

2x Argent Commander, 2x Azure Drake are must haves.

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This, very much this.

Dandai_sl said:

I feel like I win about 50/50 in master league, but almost every single one of my losses can be traced back to the cards I started with or the cards I drew in the first 3-4 turns. This is my first CCG so I don't know if they're all like this, but it's pretty disheartening. It makes me question the value of my wins as well, because I don't know if the only reason I won was because I drew superior, or at least more mana/turn appropriate, cards.

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There's an element of it in every ccg, but it's more pronounced in HS because of how simple the game is.

Faerie dragons are a must. they are untargetable by shadow word pain, fireblast, frostbolt, cone of cold, betrayal, explosive shot, etc. start with a faerie dragon and place your minions to each side of it. Get in that habit. Your opponent is forced to either put out something they know will trade or eat the damage. following up a faerie dragon with a cleric and then a good 4 drop like argus is going to win you literally 60% of games right there, the other 40% being against a weapon class, multishot, etc.

best rare to craft: defender of argus. Even more of a must-have nowadays than argent crusaders or azure drakes.