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Any general advice on how to tackle Shaman in Arena. It's my worst hero both playing as and facing. Do you always try to kill all Totems or are you willing to leave some there and do you try to get something down on turn 1 even if you have to coin it out to keep the Totems under control?
General advice can often be misleading, but I'll try anyway:
-A lot of shaman cards (specifically, cards that are popular picks + are much better WITH shaman class cards) require board presence. So, number 1 goal is eliminating that presence. Flametongue is the most obvious card to play around, but also Dire Wolf Alpha, Cult Master, Defender of Argus, and so on are all much better with Shaman, therefore are found in more Shaman decks.
-Shamans don't have hero power removal, and actually struggle to deal 1 damage. In general, 1=2=3 for health (lightning bolt and rockbiter, the two most common cheap removals, both deal 3 damage)
-In the case you can't clear board, and you have to choose what totems you must leave alive, typically I'd say... If they have no other minions on board, the healing totem is least useful. The 2nd least useful tends to be spell damage, as minions are picked far more often than spells. And some of their spells don't involve damage, anyway! Taunt obviously has to be cleared to kill other things anyway.
-Although Vitality Totem is a new thing, I still look at Shaman as 1 of the classes that never heals. (Even though Healbot is neutral, so all classes "can" heal now) This actually means consistent chipping away at them has merit. This is opposed to most other classes that either can hero power their way back or pick class cards to juice up.
As far as your original question is concerned, it really depends on your hand. If you have a 2-5-6-7 or something, there is no way I'd coin out a 2, even if it means you get ahead of them on totem patrol. You'll just far too far back if you don't draw lucky to fill in the gaps.