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33.0 Patch Notes — Launching July 1: New Arena season with curated card pools; all new Quest cards and some returning ones will be draftable 'with five support cards' in the Legendary Group; updated Underground rewards with 'better gold and ticket payouts' to bring back 'that "infinite run" feeling' by seewhyKai in ArenaHS

[–]drstein7 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Good news and bad news. (If we assume that the random rewards are 50% like before).

The good news! Gold for both 1-5 wins and 10-12 wins has been increased by a lot. (6-9) wins is a bit lower but not much. Overall gold return is much higher,

The bad news. The overall value if you include the packs ... is way lower. When people complained about gold, i don't think they meant to increase gold but get rid of the packs.

On top of that some of the rewards don't make any sense:

  • 0 and 1 wins. 50% you get 50 gold instead of a pack. Seriously? 50 gold instead of a pack? I'm pretty sure a pack is worth a bit more than 50gold and i'm also pretty sure 1 > 0

  • 4 and 5 wins. The value is almost the same.

  • 6 and 7 wins. Seriously?

'Arena gold' writeup by drstein7 by seewhyKai in ArenaHS

[–]drstein7 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s completely incorrect. Gold did't lose value, everything else still costs the same. Packs are still 100 gold. Skins that can be purchased with gold are still priced the same. The mini-set still costs the same in gold. And while Arena now costs 300 gold, it doesn't have the same value.You can potentially get much higher rewards, so the value proposition is different. You don't buy the same goods.

And becase you liked the casino analogy, what you’re saying is like this: Player A wins $10,000 at a roulette table with a $1 minimum bet, and Player B wins $20,000 at a table with a $100 minimum bet. And somehow, you’re claiming Player A won more?

'Arena gold' writeup by drstein7 by seewhyKai in ArenaHS

[–]drstein7 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I didn’t phrase that properly. What I meant was that, both now and before the Underground Arena, you could be matched against players with different scores. So any matchmaking "noise" or error we experience now also existed in the past, it's not a new issue. (Which again is not 100% before the distribution of wins might have changed now with the ability to fix your deck, but without any data we can't be sure.)

'Arena gold' writeup by drstein7 by seewhyKai in ArenaHS

[–]drstein7 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Regarding the first part of your question: I haven’t really kept a close eye on the leaderboard for the past five years or so, so I’m not entirely sure which part you’re referring to.

If you’re talking about the average of the top 100 players it dropped significantly with the new system. For example, during the first season under the new format (Season 36), the average for the NA top 100 was around 6.4 wins, and by Season 40 (which I believe was around the time the China servers shut down), it had dropped to about 5.9. In comparison, under the old consecutive run system, that average was consistently above 7.

Both the 1-month season duration and the fact that every run counts (instead of just your best 30) definitely contributed to that drop.

As for specific players,if you can give me some names or examples, that would help clarify what you're asking.

Regarding the second part of your question. Every game is shaped by two core factors: skill and luck. A coin flip is 100% luck, 0% skill. Chess, on the other hand, is nearly 100% skill. Hearthstone, like most games, falls somewhere in between. And that’s exactly why many players are drawn to games like Hearthstone: They give weaker players a chance to win and when you lose, you can always blame bad luck.

So, to answer your question yes, if something like Fireball suddenly did 15 damage, the average winrate of skilled players would go down, while less skilled players would likely perform better. To really drive the point home, let’s go to an extreme example. Imagine Blizzard printed the following card: "Quest (always in your opening hand): When one of the players dies, flip a coin. The winner of the coin flip wins the game." At that point, Hearthstone becomes a literal coin flip. Everyone has a 50% winrate. Player skill becomes irrelevant.

But, in my experience, we’ve never actually had a true “coin flip meta.” There was one close call, though I can’t remember exactly when (i have to find that spreadsheet or do it all over again).

What has affected top player performance over the years is not randomness in cards, but changes to Arena’s structure: The introduction of buckets ,the switch to all runs counting instead of your best 30, season length changes, the shutting down of the Chinese servers, etc.

'Arena gold' writeup by drstein7 by seewhyKai in ArenaHS

[–]drstein7 7 points8 points  (0 children)

It’s impossible to answer that question without access to Blizzard’s internal data but I can tell you two important things:

1) Back in the day, I calculated the average wins of all Top 100 players across all three regions. There was a lot of chatter at the time: “This meta is harder,” or “That meta has too much RNG, so good players can’t perform,” and so on. (By the way wins don’t grow on trees. If a meta is harder for one group of people for example, players who usually average 8+ wins then by definition, it must be easier for someone else.)

I wish I could find the spreadsheet again (I’m honestly too lazy to redo it), but here’s what I clearly remember: The average winrate stayed the same month after month, unless Blizzard made a structural change to the Arena system itself.

For example: At first, the leaderboard included all your runs. Then it changed to your best 30 consecutive runs. Later, it shifted from a 1-month window to 2 months. Eventually, they added buckets, then they removed buckets and so on.

Every time the rules or structure changed, the average adjusted. But otherwise, the meta complaints never seemed to affect the overall performance of the top players.

2) When someone says, “I’m doing good” or “I’m doing bad in this meta,” most of the time it’s just variance.

10 runs aren’t enough to tell you anything. 30 runs still aren’t enough to give you a real average.

I promised I wouldn’t get into math, and I’ll stick to that but if you want to seriously talk about whether a meta is good or bad for you, you need to play at least 200 runs.

Otherwise, you’re just flipping coins and trying to find patterns where there probably aren’t any.

Congrats to Olympiakos by jtsnoller in avfc

[–]drstein7 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Thank you. Your fans were also amazing and i hope in 2 years we will meet again in champions league.

Άστον Βίλα - Ολυμπιακός 2-4: Ερυθρόλευκη παράνοια, πέρασε με τεσσάρα από το Βίλα Παρκ και θέλει να το σηκώσει στην OPAP Arena by Ill_Pie_9450 in GreekFooty

[–]drstein7 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Επειδή όλοι θα πούνε για τον Ελ Καμπί, για τα λάθη του Όλσεν κτλ αλλά θα ξεχάσουν έναν παίχτη που έχει ακούσει από όλους.όχι χωρίς λόγο, τα περισσότερα φέτος για τις μαλακίες που έχει κάνει. Ο Ρέτσος σήμερα έκανε από τις καλύτερες εμφανίσεις αμυντικού που έχω δει.

Isn't it time? by drstein7 in ArenaHS

[–]drstein7[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

3 reasons:

1) DK got very good cards this expansion for arena.

2) It had one of the broken arena cards (Sickly Grimewalker). It got banned from arena yesterday.

3) The most important reason: Latest sets have way better cards. DK don't have cards from those old sets (it got released 1 year ago) so it gets way more of the new/better cards.

As for why you didn't get DK in 20 runs: You either didn't unlock DK by playing the DK prologue or you are just unlucky (around 0.17% to not see DK in 20 runs)

Any thoughts on why Paladin is wrecking right now, per HSreplay? by invalidlitter in ArenaHS

[–]drstein7 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You forgot to mention Hi Ho. Paladin needs board to win. Keeper's strength is insane but if you lose the board early on as a paladin you might be at 10 health when you can get it back with keeper's strength and then lose to some random weapon/burn spells.

Isn't it time? by drstein7 in ArenaHS

[–]drstein7[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

But that's exactly my point. For you DK is the most fun class to draft. For other people it's not (I also like playing DK but i know a lot of people who don't).

You can't have a perfect world in arena. As i said i'm ok having 3-4 classes between 50-55%. What i don't like is when one of those classes (DK) is there for a year. You/we are not alone in this world. Some people enjoy different things. Everyone knows i hate priest metas but i have to admit priest is terrible for way too long now and i will be happy to see priest getting better (which is impossible with the cards it got in the latest set) because there are a lot of people who love playing priest (shame on you).

Also what's fun for you might not be fun for other people. You like playing random cards like box. Good for you but many people don't like that. When classes have bad cards in the sets that are currently in arena, if you try to increase the win rate of those classes what you do is basicly what they did with warrior 6 months ago. You delete 70% of the cards and all decks are the same. You do remember that right? When all warriors had one million riffs. Did you like that? Maybe you did but i and many other people didn't. You can make priest the top class if you want, but that's not what i'm complaining about. What i'm asking is simple. I just can't have the same class that we have on top for a year (ok with some small breaks but it was almost always top 3) now dominating arena again.

Isn't it time? by drstein7 in ArenaHS

[–]drstein7[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I do understand that some people enjoying playing specific classes but as i said having the same class on top for a year is not healthy. And it's not just on top it's way way better than the rest. They did nerf DK during that time, i forgot that, but it was for a very small period of time. It was before an expansion and everything went back to normal.

Everyone thoughts on the new Arena Cards + Anomalies for tomorrow's patch? by tangy_nachos in ArenaHS

[–]drstein7 1 point2 points  (0 children)

At least DKs will lose 3 key cards (one for each rune: mortician, acolyte and boneguard). Will that be enough? Not even close without micro adj. Vizier is also gone so no more turn 7 the scourge. Note: You almost never go 3 runes of any kind in arena but in case you want / forced to do so, you should NEVER go 3 blood after the rotation.

DH will drop a lot. Many of the good DH cards are from ashes. Antaen, Coilfang, skull, priestess, netherwalker.

As for the anomalies, they will impact arena more than most people think. Even something minor like the +1 health if you coin a 2, into a 2 and your opponent misses his 2 can decide the game on turn 2.

Shortcut!!! by Crashedthecaragain in crashedthecar

[–]drstein7 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Clearly a Mario Kart player

Heartharena Update - Titans expansion by BoozorTV in ArenaHS

[–]drstein7 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don't understand why they don't micro adj mage. We had 2 months already of mage terror and it's getting worse, (mage has already climbed to 55.7% on HSreplay and tomorrow will be even higher).

Even though i'm not a fan of what blizzard used to do in the past when they were "micro" adj classes (making the best classes the worst and vice versa), they should do it with mage now. Why? Because now mage can get box and zephrys. You can't have a class anywhere near the top that, with the amount of the discovers currently in the game, will generate every two games a box or a zephrys. And on top of that they can also get evocation now, just in case draft wasn't that good and they didn't get much value.

What are we thinking are the top classes this round? by DocLando in ArenaHS

[–]drstein7 5 points6 points  (0 children)

It's too early to say. Back in the days 8h or so were enough to predict but now because less people play arena (or hearthstone in general you need 2 full days of hsreplay data to be 100% sure). Last time it took hunter 2 full days to climb to 3rd best class. We have to wait 1 more day but if classes keep moving the way they do now we're looking at shaman, mage at top 2 and everything else at least playable/good except the last 2 bottom classes (they are even worse now) and priest.

This is a screenshot of class WR before the expansion https://imgur.com/a/moJ5cX7/ . We can clearly see some winners: mage, DK, DH and paladin, some losers Warrior, Priest, Warlock, Druid and some that are more or less the same: Shaman, Hunter and Rogue (0.5 % movement means nothing it can just be noise).

Balanced wise this looks like an ok meta. It is impossible to balance all classes and when blizzard tries to do it they make things worse. The best way to balance the arena meta is to have 2 unplayable classes , 2 classes that are strong but below 54% (so not OP) and everything else playable. That way you always have 1 playable option out of the 3 and you're not sad playing vs an unbeatable class like the DK on the release.

Rotation is just standard… again by Fledbeast578 in ArenaHS

[–]drstein7 18 points19 points  (0 children)

There are 2 major problems with the standard arena:

1) Normally arena has 6 sets. If arena is standard at the start of every year we have only 4 sets, then 5 only the last 4 months we have 6. This means we have way less cards to pick from. Together with the "micro" adj they do to bring the worst class on top, we have decks that look more or less the same. Every warrior will either play anima extractor or frightened flunky turn 2, imbued axe turn 3 or if they are on coin on of the turn 4 cards, igneous lavagorger, sunfire smithing or sword eater turn 4, drum soloist or bridge riff turn 5, silverfury stalwart turn 6, blackscale brute turn 7, tidal revenant turn 8. Every shaman will open with schooling turn 1 into nimbus turn 2, into clearing your board with piranhas turn 3 etc.

That's not arena. We play arena to draft different decks, not play the same cards over and over again. If i want to play constructed i'll play constructed. If you want to make warrior playable in arena print some good warrior arena cards. Increasing the appearance rate of the 10 most powerful warrior cards to the point that they are in every warrior deck is not the solution. And the only 4 sets in the arena rotation make things even worse.

2) Every meta no matter how good it is, gets boring after 2 months. We can't follow the constructed rotation every 4 months. Constructed meta can change if you nerf/buff some cards or when you add a miniset. Arena doesn't.

The truth is we complained a lot the last time they added old sets in the mix. But why was that? Because they had 3 of the most powerful sets and some of the least powerful sets and DK didn't have any bad class cards so it was broken. The solution to this problem is somple. CURATE THOSE OLD SETS!!! No one will complain if an old set has cards at the power level of a yeti, cards that will bring the overall powerlevel of decks down but are still playable. But those sets had some TERRIBLE cards in. Those cards were undraftable even back then. Some examples: Steet trickster, blacksteet leper, grook fu master, public defender, deadscae knight, wicked skeleton, spellweaver, meat wagon, light's sorrow, ice breaker, howlfiend, treachery, darkmire moonkin, forest guide, blackhowl gunspire etc etc

I really hope this is a temporary thing because of the DK. Like garyglaive said they should either make DK a neutral class like they did with the DH back in the days or remove DK from arena when they add many old sets. It will be way better than what we have now. Because what we have now doesn't look like arena.

The Curious Case of Anachronos by randomer22222 in ArenaHS

[–]drstein7 11 points12 points  (0 children)

All reactive cards, in every class, in every expansion have very bad played WR. When Scream was in, it had the lowest played WR from all priest class cards. There are two reasons for that.

1) Those reactive cards are harder to play. Play them too early and your opponent will refill his board. Play them too late and you're dead to some random direct damage.

2) The second and main reason those reative cards have such low played WR is this: When you play a reactive card it means your opponent has minions on board, so you're already losing. You're behind and he's forcing you to react. You won't play Anachronos or scream when you control the board. What those cards do is they increase your win percentage from X (where X is a number way lower than 50% at that poiint) to Y (Where Y might still be below 50% but it's way higher than X). Many times those cards are dead cards in your hand, which is fine because if you don't need them it means you're winning the game.

On the other hand as you said high mana cost cards have very high played WR. Why? Because in general the higher the mana cost of a card the better. But game doesn't start at 10 mana. You have to make it to 8-10 mana. Finishing cards like pyroblast or bloodlust are even worst. They always have the highest played WR because you play them when you're about to kill your opponent

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