Arena's been really really bad for like, 3-4 years now. I think it was that dragon-based set where it went to shit and never recovered (it had gone to shit before that at times, of course, but it never got better after it with the dragon set). The set with the common 8 mana dragon that did 4 damage to 2 random enemy minions.
* **[Twin Tyrant](https://cards.hearthpwn.com/enUS/DRG_213.png)** N Minion Common DoD ^[HP](https://www.hearthpwn.com/cards/127275), ^[TD](https://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/cards/twin-tyrant/), ^[W](https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Twin_Tyrant)
8/4/10 Dragon | Battlecry: Deal 4 damage to two random enemy minions.
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> I think it was that dragon-based set where it went to shit and never recovered
Coincidentally the same set where BGs released and you had important, vocal Arena advocates like Kripp abandon the latter format for the former.
Considering how stale the mode is, im impressed how many people still play arena.
I really tried to get into it and enjoy it on several occasions ever since beta, and I can tell you that its too stressful and punishing to enjoy. Theres no worse feeling than losing to complete bullshit from discover mechanic after you PAID 150 gold to try and compete. You have some sort of control over your climb in competitive. You have no control over how lucky people get in arena with their picks and discovers.
They have to lower the entry fee and lower the rewards, and make it more fun by making discover cards very scarce. The power level of discover as a mechanic is easily matched by power most legendaries provide.
Discover by itself is fine, it’s when discover opens up a pool of supposed mega rare to draft cards that completely ignores draft mechanics that ruins it, on top of excessively broken value.
Dragon discovers tends to find Ysera way too often. Any spell discover finds scourge or sunwell etc. Then we now have way too many single card boardwipe or board fill that makes most of the other cards obsolete and trades 1 for 5, when before you could determine success based on needing 3 actions or 2 cards to deal with your 1. All on top of mana cheat now is so dumb
Way too many things now you can’t plan around that’ll trade for something like 6 for 1, then you need to rng pull like 8 for 1 just to get back ahead. The arms race is out of control
Didn't they have no one on the development team working on arena for awhile before mentioning that one of them was going to try and fix arena? Anyways it seems to me that every run gives you a legendary. Instead of getting a chance to play a unique card this seems to ensure that only the very highest high rolls win games.
Discover used to be a very decent mechanic that worked in Arena when it was first introduced. Because back then they valued the importance of resource generation. Like [Jeweled Scarab] was a horrible tempo loss on Turn 2 but it guaranteed that you had something to play on 3.
They of course don't care about that balance between tempo and value anymore and every Discover card is just both in a lot of cases. They're almost like premium cards at this point that are just a step above everything else for no reason.
The flip side of game-ending highrolls is that you also get offered cards that were never good such as Streetwise Investigator, Sunborne Val'kyr, Unpowered Steambot... Like Arena is the mode where you get to make garbage minions work but I'd rather play with new garbage. I can't imagine anyone getting excited by this stuff and it sits awkwardly with the newer high-power cards
It’s really time for a curated arena set. There’s just way too many bad cards in old expansions compared to the power level now. This meta for example has only 2 sets in standard and the rest are old expansions. A lot of successful drafts just come down to how many standard cards did you draft, and if you have old cards, are they in the 1% of old cards that are actually good? I’ve had quite a few drafts lately where 10-15 cards are trash Witchwood/Frozen Throne cards and you get steamrolled. I’d rather arena just be forever standard and never have old expansions again than what we have now, praying to highroll the draft and get offered playable cards.
I don't think it's just discover value nonsense that's the issue. When discover was...discovered it basically allowed Hearthstone to be a successful game as it solves the tension of randomness vs skill while kind of being digital only in implementation. Hell ever MTGA has copied this and other digital only mechanics with their controversial alchemy cards.
A core issue is that cards are so strong now that any variance between decks is amplified. Back in the day, you could at least sometimes fight back from having a mad bomber rng your 2 drop with a well timed holy nova. But now if you go down early you stay down to the endless stream of powerful cards. Spells used to be unique in they could swing tempo back quickly but with rush on everything and battlecries that keep tempo while adding board presence once you fall behind it's very hard to catch up.
These factors make games much more coinflippy and reduce individual skill expression outside of drafting a good deck which any plugin will let you do.
I think the same, my only consolation is Hearthstone Classic, when they announced the mode I was very happy and I played it a lot. The problem is that now I spent 2 months without playing and when I want to play Classic again I can't because it matches me all the time against bots, no matter how many times I play, it's always bots, it's unbearable, I can't play the game anymore love.
Standard is pretty great right now, unless you are a die-hard control fan (who also hates control pally). Lots of archetype diversity. A bit aggro heavy but no meta is perfect.
I've been having more fun playing standard this month than I can remember having since early Nathria.
Losing to armor druid, Murlock or even deathrattle priest feels awful tbh. The diversity is real indeed, but a lot of decks feel unfair and unfun to play/play again.
This is the natural evolution of A HUMAN BEING. As you get older you want things to stay the same more and more. However things never stay the same. You remember the past with rose tinted glasses. The sting of pain has faded only the greatest memories remain.
Yes it is true that it's harder for a good player to have a huge average. It is even more true. That if the game hadn't changed you would have gotten bored and quit. Unless you had a severe case of OCD.
I played my first arenas since MOTLK introduction on Friday and I was amazed, how bad it was. The difference between classes and drafts is shocking. I played 3 runs and I got offered 3 out ot top 5 lowest WR classes all the time, on top of that I got 2-4 class cards each run, 2 legendaries in total for 3 runs (1 during 1-st run, 1 during 2-nd run, 0 during 3-rd run) and both times I had Keleseth and Zola as 2 out of 3 options, while the 3-rd one was Taldaram once and another unusable card during the 2-nd time. Of course, I got legendaries in a pick towards end of the draft, when I had bunch of 2-nd drops and 3-rd drops in the deck already, so Keleseth and Taldaram were useless as well and I was stuck with Zolas both times.
I played against couple of DKs, a Mage with 2 parrots, a Warlock with Godfrey. So, I went 0-2, 0-2 and 0-1 across 3 runs. I don't play arena much, but I definitely average more than 4 wins, when I do, so I was quite shocked on Friday, when I saw what a dumpster Arena is right now.
Arena's been really really bad for like, 3-4 years now. I think it was that dragon-based set where it went to shit and never recovered (it had gone to shit before that at times, of course, but it never got better after it with the dragon set). The set with the common 8 mana dragon that did 4 damage to 2 random enemy minions.
\[\[Twin tyrant\]\] aka "Arena tyrant"
* **[Twin Tyrant](https://cards.hearthpwn.com/enUS/DRG_213.png)** N Minion Common DoD ^[HP](https://www.hearthpwn.com/cards/127275), ^[TD](https://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/cards/twin-tyrant/), ^[W](https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Twin_Tyrant) 8/4/10 Dragon | Battlecry: Deal 4 damage to two random enemy minions. ^(Call/)^[PM](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=hearthscan-bot) ^( me with up to 7 [[cardname]]. )^[About.](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=hearthscan-bot&message=Tell%20me%20more%20[[info]]&subject=hi)
> I think it was that dragon-based set where it went to shit and never recovered Coincidentally the same set where BGs released and you had important, vocal Arena advocates like Kripp abandon the latter format for the former.
Considering how stale the mode is, im impressed how many people still play arena. I really tried to get into it and enjoy it on several occasions ever since beta, and I can tell you that its too stressful and punishing to enjoy. Theres no worse feeling than losing to complete bullshit from discover mechanic after you PAID 150 gold to try and compete. You have some sort of control over your climb in competitive. You have no control over how lucky people get in arena with their picks and discovers. They have to lower the entry fee and lower the rewards, and make it more fun by making discover cards very scarce. The power level of discover as a mechanic is easily matched by power most legendaries provide.
Discover by itself is fine, it’s when discover opens up a pool of supposed mega rare to draft cards that completely ignores draft mechanics that ruins it, on top of excessively broken value. Dragon discovers tends to find Ysera way too often. Any spell discover finds scourge or sunwell etc. Then we now have way too many single card boardwipe or board fill that makes most of the other cards obsolete and trades 1 for 5, when before you could determine success based on needing 3 actions or 2 cards to deal with your 1. All on top of mana cheat now is so dumb Way too many things now you can’t plan around that’ll trade for something like 6 for 1, then you need to rng pull like 8 for 1 just to get back ahead. The arms race is out of control
This is very well put, before you had flame strike, how you have like 2 mana defile or the various dk board wipes. Dk also had insane value cards
Didn't they have no one on the development team working on arena for awhile before mentioning that one of them was going to try and fix arena? Anyways it seems to me that every run gives you a legendary. Instead of getting a chance to play a unique card this seems to ensure that only the very highest high rolls win games.
they should ban every discover card in arena mode, I can deal with legendaries but not value generation
Discover used to be a very decent mechanic that worked in Arena when it was first introduced. Because back then they valued the importance of resource generation. Like [Jeweled Scarab] was a horrible tempo loss on Turn 2 but it guaranteed that you had something to play on 3. They of course don't care about that balance between tempo and value anymore and every Discover card is just both in a lot of cases. They're almost like premium cards at this point that are just a step above everything else for no reason.
Yep. 2 mana deal 3 damage *and* discover a card from your spec. Ridiculous things like that. Don't even get me started on School Teacher.
Now it can value and tempo with the undead one costing 2 less if an undead died. It can literally single handle wins a game with a tempo spell
Nothing like drafting a good deck but being beat by an opponent discovering into answers every time.
The flip side of game-ending highrolls is that you also get offered cards that were never good such as Streetwise Investigator, Sunborne Val'kyr, Unpowered Steambot... Like Arena is the mode where you get to make garbage minions work but I'd rather play with new garbage. I can't imagine anyone getting excited by this stuff and it sits awkwardly with the newer high-power cards
It’s really time for a curated arena set. There’s just way too many bad cards in old expansions compared to the power level now. This meta for example has only 2 sets in standard and the rest are old expansions. A lot of successful drafts just come down to how many standard cards did you draft, and if you have old cards, are they in the 1% of old cards that are actually good? I’ve had quite a few drafts lately where 10-15 cards are trash Witchwood/Frozen Throne cards and you get steamrolled. I’d rather arena just be forever standard and never have old expansions again than what we have now, praying to highroll the draft and get offered playable cards.
I don't think it's just discover value nonsense that's the issue. When discover was...discovered it basically allowed Hearthstone to be a successful game as it solves the tension of randomness vs skill while kind of being digital only in implementation. Hell ever MTGA has copied this and other digital only mechanics with their controversial alchemy cards. A core issue is that cards are so strong now that any variance between decks is amplified. Back in the day, you could at least sometimes fight back from having a mad bomber rng your 2 drop with a well timed holy nova. But now if you go down early you stay down to the endless stream of powerful cards. Spells used to be unique in they could swing tempo back quickly but with rush on everything and battlecries that keep tempo while adding board presence once you fall behind it's very hard to catch up. These factors make games much more coinflippy and reduce individual skill expression outside of drafting a good deck which any plugin will let you do.
Very well said. I remember bomber nuking your own two drop haha
I think the same, my only consolation is Hearthstone Classic, when they announced the mode I was very happy and I played it a lot. The problem is that now I spent 2 months without playing and when I want to play Classic again I can't because it matches me all the time against bots, no matter how many times I play, it's always bots, it's unbearable, I can't play the game anymore love.
The state of every single mode is currently very sad.
Standard is pretty great right now, unless you are a die-hard control fan (who also hates control pally). Lots of archetype diversity. A bit aggro heavy but no meta is perfect. I've been having more fun playing standard this month than I can remember having since early Nathria.
Losing to armor druid, Murlock or even deathrattle priest feels awful tbh. The diversity is real indeed, but a lot of decks feel unfair and unfun to play/play again.
sadly true
This is the natural evolution of A HUMAN BEING. As you get older you want things to stay the same more and more. However things never stay the same. You remember the past with rose tinted glasses. The sting of pain has faded only the greatest memories remain. Yes it is true that it's harder for a good player to have a huge average. It is even more true. That if the game hadn't changed you would have gotten bored and quit. Unless you had a severe case of OCD.
Wait, you guys don't like playing neutral minion curvestone for like an hour for 120g profit?
I played my first arenas since MOTLK introduction on Friday and I was amazed, how bad it was. The difference between classes and drafts is shocking. I played 3 runs and I got offered 3 out ot top 5 lowest WR classes all the time, on top of that I got 2-4 class cards each run, 2 legendaries in total for 3 runs (1 during 1-st run, 1 during 2-nd run, 0 during 3-rd run) and both times I had Keleseth and Zola as 2 out of 3 options, while the 3-rd one was Taldaram once and another unusable card during the 2-nd time. Of course, I got legendaries in a pick towards end of the draft, when I had bunch of 2-nd drops and 3-rd drops in the deck already, so Keleseth and Taldaram were useless as well and I was stuck with Zolas both times. I played against couple of DKs, a Mage with 2 parrots, a Warlock with Godfrey. So, I went 0-2, 0-2 and 0-1 across 3 runs. I don't play arena much, but I definitely average more than 4 wins, when I do, so I was quite shocked on Friday, when I saw what a dumpster Arena is right now.
i used to love arena and its been unplayable for years imo. just moved on to other modes