I haven't played Hearthstone in over a year. I had thought something with C'thulu cards was the most recent set at the time, but now that I actually check, it looks like I did some of the adventurers of "Karazhan", although I don't remember it at all.

I forget why I stopped playing. Probably just got sick of too much of it, but I'm sure I also had complaints about how much it had become "curvestone", and how Blizzard's refusal to make balance changes made the game stale.

So, what's the state of the game? How much has changed? Is it worth getting back into? How annoying is going to be to try to get back into with with no cards from the last X expansions? I don't even know how big X is. Notably, I have only 500 gold in the account. After logging in they had me do three practice games with a classic mage deck and I got three packs to ?something?. It looks like Frozen Throne adventure might be free?

Ranked meta isn't enjoyable imo. Arena is in a good state.

I guess if you don't wanna grind out gold or pay for packs with $$$ it probably isn't worth it.

check out TESL

Did they balance the Arena classes, or is Mage/Rogue still stupid?

Was trying to figure out what kind of insult Teaching English as a Second Language was supposed to be, before I changed the google search to "TESL game".

Rogue is probably the strongest class, but now druid, pally, lock and mage are on similar power levels. The number of games where the opponent's deck feels truly oppressive feels a lot less than previous expansions.

Honestly the game is still good imo. I would say this forum has a pretty negative opinion and are too quick to hate on it.

Taking a year off is a bit punishing especially since they changed to three expansions this year with no adventures. UnGoro was really good though and if the recent nerfs help to solve the balance issues, KotFT could end up being really excellent too.

The game's a lot better after this most recent round of nerfs. Arena is kind of worse than ranked for me, it comes down to who has bonemare on 7 basically.

Think you're overstating bonemare being a problem. The card isn't balanced for sure, but there are tons of games that go beyond the point of it being played.

I'm just thinking how many games come down to being 99% ahead on resources, life, and board, and then slamming down bonemare on a token and immediately losing.

It happens a lot.

Scalebane is dumb too. Definitely to a lesser extent but still busted and snowbally.

That and the 2/4 minion that gives immune.

Weird interaction with that card - i put immune on a patient assassin (1/1 poisonous stealth guy) and kill something. Next turn, the warlock corrupts everything. On my turn, everything dies but the assassin.

WTF? Bug right?

Can't recommend Elder Scrolls enough, especially if you have played Hearthstone and got sick of it.

You're not as far ahead as you think you are if a turn 7 bonemare ends the game.

Realistically most games that lose to bonemare you have like 65% equity and slamming down the bonemare reduces you down to like 40-45%. Huge swing for sure, but the game is designed to have enough RNG to make you think you're way further ahead than you think you are and lets you blame luck when you lose.

A lot of arena games when you are far ahead are just you going first and drawing a bunch of good curve cards and letting you think you outplayed the other guy, when in reality there weren't too many other outcomes when two decent people play each other anyway. Being far ahead and then losing to bonemare isn't a legit complaint unless you can identify times where they clearly misplayed, because their play from the start might just be okay my hand sucks let's try to survive until bonemare.

It's like people that complain about Ult Infestation against druids when they don't bother changing their strategy up at all in higher wins. You can almost assume they have it, so you have to play an aggro all in type game to stand a chance instead of a normal value trade game. Sure some decks can't do that at all, but some can and still just play the normal value trade game and think they're "winning" because they have board and slight card advantage on turn 7-8, but yeah you're going to lose later so you're not really winning. That's really the difference between people who average 6 wins and those that average 7 wins.

Lol, no. I have a very high arena average, I know what I'm talking about here. It's a broken card, period.

opponent top decks bonemare and buffs a 1/2 into a 5/6. You have to trade your entire board into it and he gains a few extra turns and a bonus 5/5. It's a huge effect on the game state and can blow already won games wide open when they had no business being in the game.

Spikeridged steed is very similar.

It's a powerful card yeah, but you're blowing it out of proportion just because everyone else is complaining about it too. Even in your example it shows that you think having some board or card advantage means you already won the game when that is clearly not true. If you already "won" the game you should have been able to clear his board when turn 7 comes or be prepared with removal; no idea why you think you won the game if a 5/6 makes you trade your entire board into it. Usually a bonemare means they get 1 great trade out of it (which I don't deny can determine a game), but it just means you weren't as far ahead as you think you were if one trade lets him win.

Also in terms of topdecking and advantages in general, like I said deck composition matters, and if you're an aggro pally or rogue or mage without many threats, going into turn 7 with an advantage might not really be an advantage if you're facing a heavy druid or pally who has a better late game deck.

Averaging low to mid 6 wins is pretty easy in Arena, and unless you're averaging mid 7+ wins, there isn't much point to complaining rather than just trying to be better.

No, its not.

Easy in the sense that if you really tried, it's not hard to do within a month or two. Since there are no apm/mechanics requirement you improve very quickly to the ~5-6 win level where the decisions are harder but matter much less because the decisions that actually have a huge impact on the game were already correctly made by both sides; now it's just a matter of small decisions hoping it affects games in the long run.

And if there was a way to properly bet it, I'd bet a large amount any person with any sort of gaming background could be a 6+ win arena player within a month with coaching.

Is anyone interested in an arena bet? something simple like highest average over 30 runs? looking to bet between 500-5k if anyone is interested

How would you track that? You could just record runs where you know you drafted a great deck couldn't you?

make the account name you're going to use public. you may only play 30 (+-2 since the tracking could be inaccurate maybe?) arena runs during that month and we'd just be using the arena leaderboard by blizzard. if both fail to be top 100 neither one wins I'd say.

fwiw I haven't been top 100 there yet!