Hearthstone- Heroes of Warcraft (Enter Your ID!)

[Count Dooku]

I don't agree with pops here.
Sure, if you don't want to actually play the game you may do what he said... But then the question is: why do you even play HS if

playing

itself is boring or "painful"?
Also, for starters playing even against the normal AIs could help them learn the basics.

[popsofctown]

Priest, Druid and Mage have to level up to get their AoEs. Hearthstone is balanced like a broken alpha product without AoEs. Playing Hearthstone as a finished product is not painful, playing damaged hearthstone is.

If they did a better job giving you what you really needed at first and putting the stuff you didn't need until later in the level ups, I'd agree with you. But they withheld some stuff that is pretty essential to the game (while outright giving you some stuff that is great, but not essential, like Gurubashi Beserker). I think the challenge a friend workaround is the only reason they haven't met with outcry or concern about it.

[popsofctown]

Of course, Shaman's only AoE is still at rare, which is awful. It should be made basic.

Really you should just play arena until you have a jillion cards.

[Sudo_Nym]

You can do just fine in ranked with basic cards, provided you don't care about getting above rank 15. That said, you'd do best with something like Mage, which has good stuff in its basic cards, rather than stuff like Warlock or Shaman that needs a lot of class cards that aren't in its basic set.

[Venmar]

No, you should play face hunter or aggro paladin. Those two decks are incredibly good yet being incredibly cheap and easy to build due to its being largely basic and common cards, a handful of rares, thats it.

[Sudo_Nym]

It depends on where you're at. If you're completely free to play, then you need to rely on the basics, so you want a class with good basics. If you're willing to spend a little bit and buy packs or arena runs, then you'll be able to put together something cheap like face hunter or aggro pally. if you're willing to buy some of the adventures, you can go with something like a cheap version of Zoolock or Patron Warrior. If you're willing to spend a lot of money, then get whatever, I guess.

[Draynth]

So how did everyone's end of season rewards go?
I got this:

[popsofctown]

I'm not EU enough to have that quite yet.

[AstralFlare]

You can do just fine in ranked with basic cards, provided you don't care about getting above rank 15. That said, you'd do best with something like Mage, which has good stuff in its basic cards, rather than stuff like Warlock or Shaman that needs a lot of class cards that aren't in its basic set.

What rank was that at?

I'm at eleven now ;-;

[chamber]

should be somewhere between 10 and 6, 5+ should be an epic.

[popsofctown]

Eleven is enough for the golden rare. You'll be short one of those golden commons.

[Rhinox]

so as a brand new player what's the best use of the in-game gold? Assuming I'm not planning on spending any real money on the game. Should I just buy packs? Buy Arena entries? Save for opening wings in the Solo Adventures?

Right now I'm completing the daily quests and getting all my heroes up to lvl 10. Is there anything else I should be doing?

[Sudo_Nym]

Basically, you should spend gold on arena runs. Packs cost 100 gold, arena runs cost 150 gold, but come with a guarantee pack in the prizes, so you're basically spending 50 gold for the sake of the arena. If you get at least 3 wins, you'll get more than 50 gold worth of prizes, so you wind up getting more for that. Solo adventures have a lot of useful cards, but saving gold for them is probably going to take forever.

[Draynth]

I'd only recommend doing arena if you can get enough wins though

[Rhinox]

I played arena once (the free play) and only got 1 win. So I got a pack and like 20-30 gold :/

So to unlock all the adventures would cost 7000 gold, which would get me into the arena 46 times. But until I get better at the game I'm probably not going to fare too well in the arena. The 46 arena entries will get me at least 230 cards from the free packs, whereas the adventures would get me ~60 new cards I can't get from the arena. I'm guessing going for the higher volume of cards is better to build up my collection? At least until I start getting duplicates from my packs anyways?

Also, how do I find my ID? I was going to add myself to the shared google doc, but I don't know the # that comes after my name.

[Sudo_Nym]

Right; if you can consistently get to at least 3 wins, you get more by doing arena runs. Otherwise, you get more by buying packs or adventure wings. But then you can't get to at least 3 wins in arena without practicing arena, so...

[Draynth]

You can see your battle tag when you click on your friends list in the bottom right

[Rhinox]

You can see your battle tag when you click on your friends list in the bottom right

Ah thanks. I play the android version so I was like what friends list in the bottom right??? then I found it in the upper left lol.

[Ellibereth]

zzzz got 3 accounts to legend yesterday so sick of patron -.-

Rhino: I would buy packs until you can get a deck that can just stomp through adventures (Some form of zoo or face hunter), and then save up for the first two wings of naxx. After that it really depends on what type of deck you want to play. Arena is more worth and getting at least 5 wins should be pretty easy once you get the hang of things and you're also getting close to the range where you can just pay for it in cycle so that's the other option.

As for constructed, almost any aggro deck for any class where you just can stuff with burn and charge can get you to at least rank 5 pretty fast. wolf rider/arcane golem op.

[popsofctown]

You never want to spend 100 gold for a pack. Arena is always better. If you are at least decent at Arena, you will break even. If you are not decent, you will get valuable experience that moves you towards being decent, then later being good. Basically arena is paying out more to the winners, less to the losers, but more than 150 gold per entry to the entire average arena population, and you want to get a piece of that.

Early on, it may be wise to play a deck like Zoo or midrange paladin in Casual Play mode to practice playing Hearthstone so that you can do better at the arena. (you don't want to actually play Warlock in the arena, but Warlock is a good class for practicing Arena because it uses the most neutral cards, and in arena you are given a higher proportion of neutral cards than you would normally use).

[Ellibereth]

(I mean I found arena really fking boring when I started and just grinded constructed, it's not thaaat much slower if you don't mind just playing one deck for a few hundred games).

[popsofctown]

Constructed is THAT much slower. Going 7-3 takes 10 games' worth of time and nets you 100 gold. Going 30-30 takes SIX TIMES as many games for the same gold delta. If you for whatever reason find facehunter more interesting than arena, then maybe those games take a 5th as much time each and you are STILL behind. Also, if you spam facehunter hard all day you can easily hit the 100 gold per day cap. Arena has no gold per day cap.

The difference is on an order of magnitude.

[Ellibereth]

uhhh, face hunter has like, a 70-80% winrate until like rank 5ish...so like if you go like 30-12 its around the same speed to 100.
But yeah you're right about the gold cap.

[Ellibereth]

same with like mech anything or aggressive zoo or aggro paladin.

[popsofctown]

Yeah, it does, but what do you do when you hit rank 5? Email blizzard to reset your ranking so you can win streak again?

Meanwhile, Arena always resets your ranking with each run so you can sustain a 70% winrate more than a few days each month.

If you play a couple days per month then yes! there's little difference. But if you only play a couple days per month you'll probably never have a collection anyway...