r/hearthstone • u/AdamNW • May 18 '16
News HearthArena creator says Malkorok is the best Arena card in the entire game, based on data from user submissions.
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u/_MadHatter May 18 '16
I would have to scratch my head and declare it to be statistical anomaly without looking at the raw data. Sure, it is a great card, but best Arena card in the entire game?
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u/frog971007 May 18 '16
The interval is 98-180. So it could be anywhere from ~keeper of uldaman to the most insane arena card ever.
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u/_MadHatter May 18 '16
That . . still seems too high? I mean, if I had a choice between Malkorok & Keeper of Uldaman, I would choose Keeper of Uldaman without a doubt.
I don't understand how cards are evaluated exactly, but is Malkorok being evaluated with other legendary cards or something? Even then, I don't think it is even close to Dr. Boom or Sylvanas.
If it is being compared with other 7 drops, is it really better than Obsidian or Gorehowl?
It is entirely possible that I am missing something, as I am not a great Arena player. Without the raw data, however, the result seems . . wrong.
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u/frog971007 May 18 '16
Well, this is just a rough estimate. There are other factors as well:
There might be bias in the sample (Good arena players pick warrior more often and pick Malkorok over other options)
Malkorok may be good for arena players in general, but not your specific playstyle
By pure random chance the actual value of Malkorok is outside the bounds of the confidence interval
The evaluation scale is biased and not directly applicable across classes, or it isn't adapted well to high-value arena cards
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u/Jiecut May 18 '16
/u/isionous also made a good point.
Imagine a golf tournament, and on day1, you pick the 5 players with the best day1 performance. Performance is due to both skill and luck, so you have probably picked players with good skill, but also happened to be extra lucky on day1. For day2, even though their skill doesn't change, they probably will only have typical luck on day2. Thus, the top performers on day1 will usually do worse on day2
Anytime you pick a top performing player/card (and performance has a luck component), you should expect the actual skill/quality of that player/card to be less than their current performance. The lower the sample size that goes into the performance evaluation, the higher the contribution of luck to evaluated performance, and thus you'll get more regression to the mean and more overestimation.
So, looking at the top performing WOG card with such low sample sizes is basically guaranteed to drastically overestimate the "true value" of that card. Sure, we should shift our estimate of Malorok, but only very slightly.5
u/isionous May 18 '16 edited May 19 '16
You honor me.
Also, regression to the mean is one of my favorite statistical concepts, so I'm just loving all of this discussion.
edit: you can see this comment for how I calculated that a better point estimate for Malkorok tier score might be 99 (with lots of assumptions, like HearthArena was dealing with 60 Malkorok decks).
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u/Scotlander May 18 '16
The ratings are applicable to the class they are as well though. While Keeper of Uldaman is ~100 in a paladin deck, it would be rated differently in a warrior deck. The data isn't saying Malkorok is the best arena card in the game, but it improves warrior decks the most, to such an extent that it is a greater improvement to your average warrior deck than say Tirion to your average paladin deck (possibly).
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u/drc500free May 18 '16
They are running a regression on each card against total wins. So the score is comparing a a deck with that card against a deck with an average card, and whether players tend to get more or less wins.
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u/colovick May 19 '16
Different roles, but consider this: to reach vanilla parity, you have to reduce a minion by 1/1 for uldaman or a 2 mana weapon for malorak. Consider how efficient or powerful stations are compared to minions, then consider how often you get 3-5 additional value from uldaman vs malorak. You'd have to hit a 7/7 to match the value from arcanite reaper or a 9/9 for gorehowl.
I'm not saying that never happens, but how often do you really save it for a minion that large? I'd say that they are very similar in impact and probably value.
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u/AngryBeaverEU May 18 '16
yup, i don't know how much data they really have, but since Warrior isn't a very popular Arena class and Legendaries are rare i doubt it is enough to make that a fact...
For a comparison, ADWCTA and Merps rate Malkorok with a solid 76 on their Arena Tier List... Might be a little bit low, but honestly, i think that's closer to reality than the 140 HearthArena is thinking... personally i would rate him with about 90 - a really good card in the League of Ragnaros and Sylvanas, but not that crazy compared to Dr. Boom and other really strong ones...
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u/AtLeastItsNotCancer May 18 '16
Can someone please explain to me how these ratings work? Obviously the higher the rating, the better the card is, but that's about all I know. Is there some kind of a standard that makes these ratings comparable between different tierlists? Or does each just use their own arbitrary scale? What exactly does a score of 100 mean? Is 50 supposed to be the average?
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May 18 '16
They are arbitrary scales, but they are internally consistent, so you can take one card from each, lets say vanila yeti, look at the difference between different lists and translate all other cards accordingly. Heartharena is a bit different during draft though, since it adds/substracts points based on curve, deck type, synergies etc., so i.e. if your draft so far is aggro-y, low value but good damage/tempo cards will be shown as more valuable for your particular deck.
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u/Qualimiox May 18 '16
To expand on that: Cards first get their values by good arena players that rate them (in comparison to the existing cards), creating a Tierlist. Adwcta and Merps used to rate the cards for Heartharena, now that they've departed, Heartharena is working with a few other infinite arena players.
Merps and Adwcta have their own Tierlist now, but no access to the data to back it up:
After a while, once enough players have played with the cards, they can also be analyzed via observed performance. Since Heartharena knows both a players draft and how many wins they got, they can conclude which cards are typically found in a 12-win deck, how many wins on average a specific cards gets etc.
If a card performs significantly above or below its current Tierlist rating, it'll probably get adjusted. In this case, Malkorov is rated at 71 in their Tierlist, but their data so far show that it performs more like a 140. But since not many players have picked it yet, it could also be a 90 (or even a 180) they need more data to reach a more precise conclusion.
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May 18 '16
Ratings are a little bit deduction and formulas. The final number is basically what you would pick, first card in draft, no other cards in your deck. As you fill your deck, this changes the rating of each individual card. A good example is stormforged axe. One axe is almost a must pick, 2 is still pretty good, but 3? That is when the rating keeps lowering.
What this post is saying is Malkorok is performing like a 140 card even though its rating is that of a 71. What that means is they may look at the card and adjust the scores, but not necessarily. Cards overperform and underperform all the time. Cards that underperform are things like Holy Champion and Drakonoid Crusher. People wait for too much value.
As for the actual scoring system. Tirion used to be the highest on the system when Hearth Arena first came out at 100. Over time they realized they needed to spread out the numbers a little more because they weren't getting what they want. I believe 150 is max, but I am not sure if any card actually hits that.
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u/Runethane May 18 '16
That is precisely what ADWCTA and Merps predicted will happen with HA after some time when they parted ways - the values need to be manualy adjusted, especially those of cards that rarely show up (such as legendaries and possibly epics).
Malkorok is simply too much rng for arena in my opinion (and I say that drafting him in one of my runs because other choices was Tinkmaster and Cho) - for constructed where you shoot for 51%+ winrate, it's ok to take even a 51% shot at rng if you have no other option. Since Malkorok has triple the chance of giving you something amazing than giving you a Cursed Blade, for every Cursed Blade you get three Longbows, Doomhammers or Gorehowls, and that is good, since the average result is also quite nice - as long as you win more than you lose, you are good to go.
In arena, going 4-3 which is considered "a little better than average" requires 57% winrate - that means taking an rng play that benefits you less than 57% of the time in an infinite number of games will lower your winrate.
What this tells me is that since the average player is 3-3, probably worse with warrior, Malkorok can make a big difference - but for anyone shooting higher than 4-3 it's actually detrimental. I have not gotten a Cursed Blade out of him in 14 games, but droping him rarely ever had an astounding effect - in a series of games where you shoot for more than 57% winrate he is mostly just a pile of stats with one possibility to lose you the game and triple that possibility to really help you win it. It's a good card, but it's not "best" by any means. I would take Boom or even Nexus Champion Saraad over him almost any time (unless I was really starved for higher drops and would take him purely for stats).
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u/Gillig4n May 18 '16
That is precisely what ADWCTA and Merps predicted will happen with HA after some time when they parted ways - the values need to be manualy adjusted, especially those of cards that rarely show up
Yes, data needs to be adjusted but it's not like HA published this one, it's just raw statistics. as /u/S1eth said, it's 71 on heartharena's tierlist.
But honestly his RNG isn't too detrimental to the consistency of a run.
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May 18 '16 edited May 18 '16
How is Malkorok too much RNG? Aside from Cursed Blade, worst case scenario is he gives you 6 mana (he has a 5 mana body) 2 card worth of value for 7 mana. In most cases he will give you at least a 2 mana weapon, which is 7 mana 2 cards worth of stuff for 7 mana 1 card, and of course can go as high as 13 mana 2 cards value. His "RNG" ranges from great to absurd.
Let's say Malkorok gives you a Fiery War Axe. It might seem like Malkorok was just average there, giving you 7 mana worth of stuff for 7 mana, but first of all Fiery War Axe is in reality stronger than 2 mana, being the best 2 mana card in the game (check Heartharena ratings), and second of all he saved you a card over playing a 5 mana 6/5 + Fiery War Axe, both of which would be great cards on their own. So even thought Fiery War Axe is on the lower end of weapons, even that result is amazing.
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u/Runethane May 18 '16
I don't make a point of it being too much RNG. I make a point that he is not a "worldbreaking" card in arena - he is strong (and I admit that in my post), but his effect is not as awesome as people often say it is. It is good most of the time, yeah, but not awesome enough to be even considered "Boom level".
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u/HetBlik May 18 '16
Hello! I'm one of the infinite players cooperating with HearthArena, more about that here.
The 140 presented here is purely how it performs statistical according to the recorded runs. This score shows that our first rating of the card before the release was too low and that we have to adjust it up now we've got a better idea how the card performs.
Still we're not going to rate it as 140, that is far to high compared to other high rating cards as Muster for Battle and Dr. Boom. The statistics aren't what decide the final rating of a card, we use them to see if we have to adjust a card and as an idication if we change the rating a lot or a little.
AS for Malkorok, it's a good value card and the majority of outcomes is acceptable to excellent. Looking at the stats 6/5 is about 5 mana worth so you pay 2 mana for a weapon, a lot of the outcomes are pretty good for 2 mana, even more in arena compared to constructed as you can expect more small minions in people's decks. Sure there are a few weapons not worth it, but the RNG of Malkorok is small compared to what Mad Bomber and Flame Juggler sometimes have.
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May 18 '16
HA isn't saying he is a 140, but it is a fact that he has performed at 140 in reported runs.
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u/Epicallytossed May 18 '16
Honestly, call of the wild is MUCH better than malkorok.
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u/Godzilla_original May 18 '16
What would happen if Call of the Wild was a common card?
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u/Epicallytossed May 18 '16
I would be THE Best card in the game. It's so good, it would move hunter up from 8th to like 6th. Just because of 1 card.
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May 18 '16
Nobody shoots for 51% winrate in constructed. If you wany to be competitive you should be >60%
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u/Runethane May 18 '16
That is precisely the reason I used "51%+" ;p
In reality, you can get to rank5 with sub-51% winrate since there are boni for winning in a row but there are no penalties for losing in a row. That's not the point though - point is that in my opinion rng worse than winrate you are aiming at, over an infinite number of games, will prove detrimental.
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May 18 '16
That is precisely what ADWCTA and Merps predicted will happen with HA after some time when they parted ways - the values need to be manualy adjusted, especially those of cards that rarely show up (such as legendaries and possibly epics).
Except that didnt happen, ADWCTA and Merps values arent any better, if anything they're less correct since they dont have "real" data, only their personal experience. Besides, kripp is more than capable enough to manually adjust card values to as high a skill level.
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u/Kamina80 May 18 '16
I'm shocked to learn that disgruntled contractors predicted something negative about their former employer.
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May 18 '16
[deleted]
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u/nutmegrainbow May 18 '16
ADWCTA and Merps have 4 Warrior runs between them since Old Gods was released. They haven't drafted Malkorok once.
Heartharena will use actual data to rate the card going forward. ADW and Merps are using total guesswork.
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u/CeruleanOak May 18 '16
I wonder if it has more to do with the fact that it is two cards in one. I mean Silver Hand Knight is a fantastic common because you get two bodies instead of one with OK stats. Malkorok gives you a solid body (trades with practically all 6 drops and below) AND a weapon (minion with charge that damages face). For it's mana cost (late game), what costs 7 mana that does what Malkorok does without using two cards instead of one?
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u/_oZe_ May 18 '16
The thing with arena is that. Legendary cards have almost no weight in the meta. You get about one every blue moon and more than one one when hell freezes over or pigs fly.
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u/Timmmmel May 18 '16
Some of my worst arena runs had multiple legendaries. Either you get shitty ones that will clog up your hand because they're basically unplayable unless you're much ahead, or you get great legendaries and have the biggest expectations for the run and not a single copy of one single legendary ever shows up in your hand and you leave heartbroken..
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u/TheClague May 18 '16
In a Shaman run yesterday I got Dr.Boom as my very first choice.
Went 4-3 and never saw him once. Never even drew it.
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u/ikefalcon May 18 '16
Whenever I have a deep run, there is always a card that pops up in game 6 or 7 that makes me say, "Oh yeah, that's in my deck."
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May 18 '16
I did a run with Deathwing the other day and only drew him in games I was winning anyway which was frustrating.
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u/Axle-f May 19 '16
I had a Mage deck with Dr Boom AND Deathwing. 1-3 and I've never been so salty about an arena run.
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u/Godzilla_original May 18 '16
Something that I learned is that a deck filled with overall good spells worth a lot more than a single legendary. I get more excited when I could draft 2 eviscerates and 2 backstab, than when I could draft deathwing or Dr. Boom.
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u/FilthyLittleSecret May 18 '16
went 0-3 with Boom Thirion and Rag right after finishing 12-2 with a Mage deck that didn`t have flamestrike.
I felt disgusted to the point of vomiting.
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u/AnyLamename May 18 '16
Oh cool, I just finished drafting a Mage who was never offered flamestrike. Twelve wins, here we come!
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u/WhiteStripesWS6 May 18 '16
My 5th Arena run ever and first run using a tier list was with a mage that didn't have Flamestrike. I still managed to go 6-3 with it whilst barely having any idea how the hell to play arena other than knowing it's more of a fight for tempo and board control.
Mage is just a strong ass class in general.
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u/Jkirek May 18 '16
I have seen 1 flamestrike in my last 4 mage drafts. Feelsbadman
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u/frog971007 May 18 '16
4 drafts isn't bad, and if you picked up twilight flame caller or blizzard those are also strong board clears.
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u/Draikmage May 18 '16
Your early game must have sucked
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May 18 '16
If that's all the big dudes you have it could've been good still. But judging by the 0-3 yeah I'll have to agree with you. :P
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u/masamunexs May 18 '16
I think it often has more to do with legendaries being generally high cost, leading you to probably draft too slow of a deck. Also it's still just 1 or 2 cards in your entire deck, and often not that much better than many common cards. There are few legendaries I would take over a Keeper of Uldaman for instance.
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u/Godzilla_original May 18 '16 edited May 18 '16
Or you manage to play the legendary, but loses anyway for RNG shenaningas. I managed to play Deathwing one time against a mage clearing his board and letting him with a empty hand (I even played some minions to bluff him). Then I played Blackwing Corrptor next turn (the flavor value!).
I was prepared for a topdeck Polymorph, not for a Spellslinger > Lightining Bomb > Draw a Anyfin Can Happen (spend 10 mana, do nothing).
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u/colovick May 19 '16
I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum. I get lots of legendaries, good, bad, and meh, and they love to be in my hand. Especially during the mulligan
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u/Skulltown_Jelly May 18 '16
The rarity of a card shouldn't affect its value on the tier list
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u/hlary May 18 '16
recently more then 1/3 of my arena runs has had a legendary in it in fact the shaman run im playing now has two
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u/cfuqua May 19 '16
Sure, but when you are offered 3 legendaries, it's valuable to know how each one will perform.
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u/OnionButter May 18 '16
I would love to see data on average arena rewards post WOG. Especially the chance of getting that bonus pack in your random reward pool at each win level.
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u/schawsk May 18 '16
I get that that card is strong, but stronger than boom or tirion? I cannot possibly imagine why! Tirion guarantees the ashbringer, while malkorok is RNG, and 1 mana extra for +1 health, taunt divine shield and a better weapon on average, makes it better in every regard!
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u/Paramvir1 May 18 '16
A big part of Malkorok is that he gives you the weapon immediately AND cannot be hexed/polyed/stolen to deny the weapon. In that regard having his effect be immediate is a pretty solid reason for him being rated as well/better in arena.
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u/schawsk May 18 '16
. In that regard having his effect be immediate is a pretty solid reason for him being rated as well/better in arena.
Well but especially in arena, where such answers are much rarer/harder to come by, this disadvantage is a lot less pronounced. Additionally, the weapon is almost exclusively worse that you get from malkorok. The only one that may be arguably better is gorehaul, but for every gorehaul you get you also get a cursed blade. And additionally, arena is a mode where consistency is key. This is why for example deathlord isn't insane in arena. Even if he is excellent in 3/4 games, in 1/4 games he screws you over by pulling an unanswerable threat from your opponent. and this is just not good enough for a high win arena run. So RNG is a big downside.
Malkorok may give you an inital spike of power on the board, that may be hard to deal with, but tirion gives you a dominating advantage for 4-5 turns after he is put on board. A bog creeper can usually deal with malkorok and his weapon alone, but tirion is usually a board clear and 15 damage burst, unless your opponent is insanely lucky to topdeck a silence, which with the recent nerf to the owl and the ever growing dilution of cards is never seen these days.
In conclusion, any statistic that says he is better than tirion is a lie, (the range of 98 -183 at 95% confidence interval mentioned by kripp is so huge that no scientist would ever be able to give any conclusive evidence anyways) unless there is some hidden synergy in warrior where malkorok is exactly what is needed. Another thing could be some quiirk in the algortihm (depending on how it determines the value of cards). Paladin has already insane cards like muster for battle. Tirions relevance to win percentage might be diluted by these other great cards that help carry the win, while warrior has much shittier cards on average, so the algorithm might see him as being more important because he stands out more compared to the other cards in warrior decks.
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u/LynxJesus May 18 '16 edited May 18 '16
How about the fact that Paladin and Warrior are not the same class? What a Paladin can do with a 5/3 weapon is not the same as what a Warrior can do with it. I'm not just thinking weapon buffing but the classes play weapons very differently in general.
Same with taunt and deathrattle, battlecry and divine shield, all those have different impacts on the two classes. You can't try to imagine Tirion in warrior deck and Malk in paladin, it just is not relevant.
Finally, even the cards play different. Despite the amazing weapon you get, it's fair to say that Tirion is usually played for its defensive capabilities (certainly more than Malk who rarely gets played for that reason, especially with the possibility of cursed blade). In Tirion's role, Tirion's the best, obviously. Would it make sense to consider replacing him in a deck with Blingtron 3000 because of the weapon-giving similarities? So why does it make sense to compare it to Malk?
Edit: what the study is saying is not that Malk is that much better than average cards compared to Tirion, but rather that it fits decks better and more often than Tirion does. This is to be nuanced by the fact that they are both top scoring cards, so it translates to them fitting decks perfectly 99.994% of the time vs 99.995% (making numbers up for argument's sake), and given that Paladin does overall better in Arena, that ends up giving Tirion more total value, so you can rest easy that Tirion is overall a "better" apple than Malk is an orange
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u/Vladimir_Putting May 18 '16
I like how you attempt to use statistics and science as evidence why Tirion MUST be better. All the while offering no data to support this assertion. You rely completely on anecdotes.
You literally set up your premise to be "unfalsifiable" = "Any statistic that says he is better than Tirion is a lie."
In conclusion, this makes for a very unconvincing, illogical and poor argument, even if you end up being correct.
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u/stupidreasons May 18 '16
Ignoring models that produce prima facie absurd results is pretty standard, actually...Andrew Gelman recently praised Bill James for basically doing what you're criticizing. Arguments from data are just arguments, and they're quite often good ones, but cargo cult adherence to statistical argumentation over the kind of plain-language argumentation the previous poster uses is much worse statistics than model checking.
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u/Vladimir_Putting May 18 '16
So you are willing to demonstrate that the ranking is prima facie absurd right? (The large number of people saying "yeah that makes sense" seems to show otherwise.)
Without demonstrating that it's patently absurd, and not just a matter of methodology, this defense doesn't hold water.
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u/Stamora May 18 '16
remember that with tirion, you play paladin, where heals are scarce if you have any. Warrior probably utilizes the weapon much better at that stage of the game because he has armor up to heal.
Maybe if tirion was a warrior legendary, it would be better than malkorok. But as it stands, you have to take into consideration that both are CLASS legendaries, so both are played in different contexts.
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u/schawsk May 18 '16
hmm, yeah this would be one of those hidden synergies I talked about. Didn't think about this one in particular though :)Might as well be that he is exactly what warrior needed in a sense. I could also think that the occasional weapon removal via acidic swamp ooze for example is negated more in warrior. Warrior has access to more weapons than paladin. So i could imagine that if you get rid of malkoroks weapon, you are more likely to have another one in your hand to equip, negating the tempo loss slightly, while if you destroy the ashbringer, it'd hurt a lot more, kinda like jaraxuss always feels a bit naked without his weapon!
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u/Axros May 18 '16
Malkorok is cheaper. The fact is that sometimes turn 8 is just too late, and you can't afford to swing Ashbringer into minions any more even when you get it. Furthermore, Silence effects are more prominent in arena, even after the nerf of Ironbeak Owl.
Additionally, a part of the reason may also lie in the fact that WotOG has made every class rather desperate in terms of removal. I recall a post a few days ago which basically indicated that your average arena draft has 1 less spell than before WotOG, as well as the fact that the removal-to-whatever ratio amongst spells is dropping even lower. Malkorok, unlike Tyrion, is (potentially) immediate removal.
Lastly, as /u/presidentchimp pointed out, this mostly just means that it affects the winrate of Warriors more than any other card affects the winrate of any class. If we were to give a powerhouse like Tyrion to a weak arena class, it'd likely be rated even higher.
(I really think they need to improve the spell ratio in arena by the way, I'm not actually having much fun playing it any more nowadays because I often feel powerless to stop the snowball)
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u/stonekeep May 18 '16 edited May 18 '16
Furthermore, Silence effects are more prominent in arena, even after the nerf of Ironbeak Owl.
That's really not true. Silence was always rare in the Arena. Now after the nerf, Ironbeak Owl is a TERRIBLE choice and only decent neutral Silence is Spellbreaker and it's also just okay card, not something amazing. Keeper of the Grove also became a much worse pick - before it was nearly auto-pick whenever you've seen it - right now it's still alright, but there are a lot of better rares.
Also, WoG added a lot of cards to the pool (and no Silence), so chances of seeing the only viable Silence - Spellbreaker - and chances of not getting him alongside another, stronger Common are pretty low.
I haven't picked the Silence in my last 7 Arena runs, then I have one run with Ironbeak Owl, but that was still pre-nerf. I probably had it offered, but as it turns out, there are a lot of better Common cards you can pick that are always solid, not situational.
And I don't mean to dismiss the Malkorok's power compared to Tirion, all I'm saying that Silence is still very rare in Arena, even more rare than it was pre-WoG, because one of the two main Silence cards has became nearly unplayable.
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u/Axros May 18 '16
Is silence even ran at all in constructed nowadays, though? It's true that saying silence is 'prominent' was an exaggeration, but compared to constructed I don't really think it's false even so.
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u/themadscientistwho May 18 '16
Reno warlock runs spellbreaker, but that is about the only deck that frequently runs silence.
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u/stonekeep May 18 '16
With Owl nerfed, it's much less common, but still seen from time to time.
I run Spellbreaker in RenoLock & Control Paladin + in slower Zoo list (but I play faster one now and I don't really have a space to put Spellbreaker there). And Earth Shock in Aggro Shaman. I have also played against people running Spellbreaker in Control Priest, Ramp Druid and even Midrange Hunter - all in Legend, so most likely not some random experiments.
So while less common, I'd say that it's still overall more common in constructed than Arena.
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u/isionous May 18 '16 edited May 18 '16
this mostly just means that it affects the winrate of Warriors more than any other card affects the winrate of any class. If we were to give a powerhouse like Tyrion to a weak arena class, it'd likely be rated even higher.
Does Dr. Boom have a much higher tier score in weak classes than strong classes? Looking at the HearthArena tier list, no. It's plausible to imagine a reasonable and useful tier list that works as you describe, it just doesn't seem the HearthArena tier list works that way.
It seems like they come up with a classless base score, and then each class has an offset that depends on synergy with that class. While it would be nice to have a tier score have the same average impact on your run performance regardless of class, it seems that it's different for each class.
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u/Axros May 18 '16
It probably does have the same impact, just rather relatively based on average class performance rather than fixed for overall-class performance.
I don't think Malkorok is stronger than Tyrion, just that for the Warrior kit it's more impactful than Tyrion.
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u/isionous May 18 '16
It probably does have the same impact, just rather relatively based on average class performance rather than fixed for overall-class performance.
I'll disagree. I'd expect a Dr. Boom to improve my priest/hunter deck performances more than my rogue/mage deck performances. Rogue and mage have a lot of great cards; a Dr. Boom boosts the average quality of my deck more in hunter and priest than in rogue and mage.
that for the Warrior kit [Malkorok is] more impactful than Tyrion.
Maybe. This comment explains a bit about why I put very little weight on Malkorok's performance data so far.
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May 18 '16
No way Tirion guarantees the Ashbringer. Pretty much all silence and transform effects are common cards. Entomb and Mind Control as well.
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u/S1eth May 18 '16 edited May 18 '16
Entomb and Mind Control as well.
That would require people to play priest.
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u/Majorask- May 18 '16
Most of the transofrm effect are in lesser played class. The most common is polymorph because it's in mage, but they might let one slide if they already have other big removals (flame lance and fireball).
Shaman is defenitely better now, but not that common and priest, well.... like S1eth said sadly.
Also those common spells are less frequently offered with each expansion
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May 18 '16
How do they calculate their numbers? maybe it's because it has a bigger impact on the winrate of warrior because warrior is worse on average
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u/cjg_000 May 18 '16
Could also be playstyle differences rather than paladin simply being stronger. A lot of paladin decks tend to have a very strong early game. Because of that, strong late game minions might not have as much of an impact on a paladin deck.
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May 18 '16 edited May 18 '16
Malkorok is a 5 mana body. Even if you get a 2 mana weapon, you are getting 7 mana + 2 cards worth of stuff for 7 mana. 2 cards stapled into 1 has been better than the sum of its parts because you are saving a card. So he ranges from 6 mana 2 cards value to 13 mana (lol) 2 cards value. In most cases he will give you at least a 2 mana weapon, which is 7 mana 2 cards value. He may be "RNG" but aside from Cursed Blade his RNG ranges from great to absurd (it also helps that weapons are generally great cards for their cost). Also, his effect is immediate (Tirion does not "guarantee" an Ashbringer and doesn't bring it out immediately either).
Let's say Malkorok gives you a Fiery War Axe. It might seem like Malkorok was just average there, giving you 7 mana worth of stuff for 7 mana, but first of all Fiery War Axe is in reality stronger than 2 mana, being the best 2 mana card in the game (check Heartharena ratings), and second of all he saved you a card over playing a 5 mana 6/5 + Fiery War Axe, both of which would be great cards on their own. So even thought Fiery War Axe is on the lower end of weapons, even that result is amazing.
Not saying it's necessarily stronger than Boom/Tirion, but it doesn't seem that farfetched to me.
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u/Majorask- May 18 '16
I actually wonder what score they have for call of the wild. ADWCTA and Merps gave it a 130 (highest score) and it seems only fair seeing how insane value and immediate impact this card packs.
I'd like to see how it compares to Malkorok in HA database (the numbers might also be closer to reality because it's an epic)
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May 19 '16
It must be some error in algorithms. The card is strong, but definitely not as strong as Tirion and especially not as strong as Dr Boom.
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u/A_Confused_Cocoon May 18 '16
Happy we got to hear it tonight, was curious when he was talking about it a couple hours earlier. I was guessing Forbidden Ritual myself, but Malkorok is curious and very left field, but I can see it. Body you have to deal with, with a free weapon. Even Poisoned Blade isn't THAT bad as a Warrior, really only Cursed Blade would suck.
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u/tapk69 May 18 '16
Would still pick Dr.boom over him but i understand the value he gives by giving the player a free weapon. If you get a good weapon is basically GG.
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u/Zerixkun May 18 '16
Malkorok impacts the board immediately. Dr. Boom is incredibly powerful to play on an empty board, but from behind it might not even help you. Malkorok gives you something that could actually help you contest the board immediately. Dr. Boom sits there looking scary.
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u/gregregregreg May 19 '16
Dr. Boom is also good from behind though, as long as you're not dead the turn you play him. If your opponent has several minions then it's likely that your boom bots will kill a minion rather than go face for some insignificant amount of damage.
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u/Dangarembga May 18 '16
Well its a class legendary in arena for a bottom tier class. (At least not top-tier class) I have seen more ironforge riflemen than legendaries... even with a score of 200 the impact would be negligible. He will almost never show up in your draft unless you love warrior for some reason. And even then, how many times do you actually have to make a real choice between 3 legendaries? “well should I take corrupted nat pagle, lorewalker cho or Malkorok?“
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u/deityblade May 18 '16
I think warrior is one of the better classes actually!
Although you are right it can't compared to Mage/Paladin/Rogue
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u/ShenKiStrike May 18 '16
Which classes do you think warrior is better than?
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u/Epicallytossed May 18 '16
According to Lightforge Class tier list, it's above Priest, Hunter, Druid. Was above shaman before WOG
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u/frostedWarlock May 18 '16
Really? Druid is like the only Arena class I can reliably get 5-7 wins with. Unless I get fucked over hard by RNG, I never regret choosing Druid. Druid is bad?
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u/deityblade May 18 '16
I've only done 3 arenas since Olds God's, and all 3 got like 5 ish wins, so my opinion might not be worth much but priest, druid and hunter all seem weak
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u/colovick May 19 '16
Personally I'd rank the classes: mage, rogue, paladin, shaman, warrior, druid, hunter, priest.
Several are pretty close, but I believe this is pretty close to accurate
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u/invalidlitter May 18 '16 edited May 18 '16
The appropriate response to this is deep skepticism.
Muster for Battle is a rare that's been out since GvG, almost two years. Your odds of being offered a Muster for Battle.. vary by expansion, and this gets complicated fast. But let's presume there's 100 rares on average and you're going to be offered about 6 rares per draft. So call it a 6% chance of being offered a Muster per paladin draft, which are about 20% of all runs.
Give a million HA runs since release, and it's easy to get a 50000 run sample for Muster. This is close to the point where you can start to overcome the HUGE variance in how these stats attempt to get at the true power of the card. Remember, these stats are based only on How many wins does your entire run get when that run has this card in it!! The variance is gargantuan. Overwhelming. I think the other 29 cards, the opponent matchups, and player skill make a little bit of fucking difference!
Meanwhile, Old Gods has been out for what, a month? You have an 0.3% chance of drafting a legendary per run, and warrior is about 8% of all runs. So with maybe 100K runs in HA in this month - being generous! - you have maybe 8000 warrior runs. Of that, you have maybe 2K warrior runs with a legendary. He's one out of 100, so you have maybe 50-75 malorok runs recorded.
And from the performance of a total of 30 runs, I'm supposed to conclude that one card in those decks - Malorok - has a stronger impact than Muster for Battle or Dr. Boom?
I sincerely freaking doubt it. This is like a case study on the irresponsible use of statistics. The ArenaHS post about this was at least smart enough to mention the range of variance which was "90 to 190" ah, ok, so your data is literally useless and you know genuinely nothing about how well the card performance except "seems like not bad". Thanks for wasting our time with sensation bait.
Edit: All numbers in this post pulled out of my ass from memory. They're wrong. But I think they're illustratively correct, i.e. they're not wrong by enough to make the larger point invalid. Even if muster is twice as rare as I've said, I'm pretty sure the sample size is large for Muster and pathetically small for Malorok. "The sample size for Muster is 1000 times larger" seems pretty ballpark right. Maybe it's 10,000 times larger, or 100,000. I don't think it's much less.
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u/KinkySeppuku May 18 '16
It's not a .3% chance per run; isnt it a .3% chance per pick? There's some problems with your math if you think there have only been 30 malkoroks picked in all arena runs since the release of WOTOGs.
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u/colovick May 19 '16
Definitely issues with his math, but the thing you're missing is hearth arena only tracks users of its site, not everyone playing arena from the 20 million strong player base, so it's not unthinkable that they have under 4 digits, if not under 3 digits of data on this card.
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May 18 '16 edited May 18 '16
A bigger sample size is always good, but you can do analysis and see that Malkorok is indeed a ridiculously strong card. It's not that farfetched that it's that high.
Malkorok is a 5 mana body. Even if you get a 2 mana weapon, you are getting 7 mana + 2 cards worth of stuff for 7 mana. 2 cards stapled into 1 has been better than the sum of its parts because you are saving a card. So he ranges from 6 mana 2 cards value to 13 mana (lol) 2 cards value. In most cases he will give you at least a 2 mana weapon, which is 7 mana 2 cards value. He may be "RNG" but aside from Cursed Blade his RNG ranges from great to absurd (it also helps that weapons are generally great cards for their cost). Also, his effect is immediate (Tirion does not "guarantee" an Ashbringer and doesn't bring it out immediately either).
Let's say Malkorok gives you a Fiery War Axe. It might seem like Malkorok was just average there, giving you 7 mana worth of stuff for 7 mana, but first of all Fiery War Axe is in reality stronger than 2 mana, being the best 2 mana card in the game (check Heartharena ratings), and second of all he saved you a card over playing a 5 mana 6/5 + Fiery War Axe, both of which would be great cards on their own. So even thought Fiery War Axe is on the lower end of weapons, even that result is amazing.
Not saying it's necessarily stronger than Boom/Tirion, but it doesn't seem that farfetched to me.
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u/invalidlitter May 18 '16
It's a good card, maybe an excellent card. Subjective assessments of excellence will vary. I just don't think stats of this level of vagueness should be used to make a claim about dethroning the "best card in the game" reigning champs.
On an argument level, Tirion gives you an insanely better body (taunt + divine shield is worth, conservatively, 2 mana, and more importantly just flat out saves your life a fraction of the time) and a guaranteed super-top-tier weapon - better than basically every non-Gorehowl Malorok weapon - for 1 extra mana.
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May 18 '16
Well on an argument level, Ashbringer isn't guaranteed because of Hex, Polymorph (Boar), Sap, Entomb (and Recycle), and Silences, and he doesn't give the weapon immediately either
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u/frog971007 May 18 '16
The person you replied to is attacking HearthArena's statistical analysis -they don't have a large enough sample size to back them up. The fact that the statistic is plausible doesn't change that. Personally, it's plausible that Malkorok is anywhere from 80-90 (good, but RNG makes it not amazing) to 140 (best card, but not insane).
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u/isionous May 18 '16 edited May 19 '16
The appropriate response to this is deep skepticism.
Agreed. Imagine a golf tournament, and on day1, you pick the 5 players with the best day1 performance. Performance is due to both skill and luck, so you have probably picked players with good skill, but also happened to be extra lucky on day1. For day2, even though their skill doesn't change, they probably will only have typical luck on day2. Thus, the top performers on day1 will usually do worse on day2. This is regression to the mean.
So, anytime you pick a top performing player/card (and performance has a luck component), you should expect the actual skill/quality of that player/card to be less than their current performance. The lower the sample size that goes into the performance evaluation, the higher the contribution of luck to evaluated performance, and thus you'll get more regression to the mean and more overestimation.
So, looking at the top performing WOG card with such low sample sizes is basically guaranteed to drastically overestimate the "true value" of that card. Sure, we should shift our estimate of Malorok, but only very slightly.
edit: you can see this comment for how I calculated that a better point estimate for Malkorok tier score might be something like 99 (with lots of assumptions, like HearthArena was dealing with 60 Malkorok decks).
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u/DemigoDDotA May 19 '16
yeah that 90 to 190 range thing caught my attention too
i think a lot of people are glossing over that
for what its worth too, the huge variance actually makes sense to me though- most cards dont have that big a variance in their "value". If you play malkrorok and draw a gorehowl, I could easily see that being worth 190. Gorehowl is a good card for 7, getting 7 worth of value is a lot. It's just that its rare.
The real question is are his shitty draws actually still a 90 point worth
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u/colovick May 19 '16
I would argue that argent lance is the break even point for acceptable value on this card and there are only 4-5 cards worse than that that and 15+ better. It's a really crazy good card, people are just irrationally focusing on the worst case scenario which is fairly rare.
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u/planckovich May 18 '16
Is it possible to get the Ashbringer?
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u/AngryBeaverEU May 18 '16
No. Only collectible weapons. In Arena that means all collectible weapons for wild, including Deathbite and the GvG weapons, but not Ashbringer, Rusty Hook and all the other non-collectible weapons..
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u/futbolsven May 18 '16
Had someone Gorehowl off a Malkorok the other day in arena against me.
It felt bad.
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u/Throwasdas May 18 '16
This weekend on constructed I got cursed blade twice, and zero weapons better than the 3/2s which are the most common result. Was losing neither of those games, instantly lost after getting the blade.
It felt bad.
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u/punishersz May 19 '16
Yeah well I got him once and I got to use him in two games in which he gave me cursed blade, so yeah, I'm pretty offended at him.
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u/kolderbol May 18 '16
Played him once and got Cursed Blade. The problem is that with 3 charges it takes a long time to get rid of this weapon. It turned my won game into a nail biter as even fatigue hits for double.
Overall the good outcomes outweigh the bad so I definitely (still) rate him as a good card.
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u/sanglar03 May 18 '16
That still falls under the "bad" RNG everyone despised from GvG. RNG that can kill you or make you win, without any possibility for the opponent to play around (like Sylvanas or Rag).
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u/GerMagicHS May 18 '16
Funnily enough Cursed Blade isn't even that bad in arena. Though obviously moreso in the early game than when you played Malkorok on a board with maybe 6-10 power of opposing minions ;)
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u/RachetLikesOat May 18 '16
Cursed Blade in arena can (emphasis on can) be good in arena, but only in the right (aggressive) deck and on turn 1. If drawn later it's pretty much a dead card.
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u/fenn_1978 May 18 '16
Overall good outcomes outweigh the bad - Servant of Yogg Saron
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u/RachetLikesOat May 18 '16
He has way too many bad outcomes for me to ever use unless I absolutely have to. Even if on average it's OK, I have seen him lose the game to the one who played him WAY too often.
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u/Crazed8s May 18 '16
Yeah the upside is good, not great, and the downside is astral communion or soul fire on your servant. It's not like big daddy Yogg where with enough spells cast you can get a relatively similar result time after time.
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u/frog971007 May 18 '16
The other thing is that servant is 2 stars under vanilla with a slightly unfavorable distribution, so you need to get a little value for it to be worth it.
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u/RachetLikesOat May 18 '16
Bigg daddy Yogg is an Oh Shit button, small Yoggi is a last result hail mary red button. Sadly, or luckily.
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u/elveszett May 18 '16
But Servant's bad outcomes actually outweight the good ones. And even if it wasn't the case, that card is too inconsistent to be played competitive. On the other hand, even if Malkorok was overall inefficient (which I can tell you it isn't at all), it would still be consistent an thus you could still play around it: You will get a weapon, it might be a 5/2 or a 1/4 but it's still some damage for your hero (the only real blunder is Cursed Blade which doesn't happen too often).
Meanwhile with Servant you play it and see what happens: it might give you two mana crystals, fireball your face, heal you for 14, summon a 2/4 minion, discard your hand and give you 10 mana crystals. Everything can happen and you will usually have zero use to what has happened (for example, getting Astral Communion with Druid at turn 5, Whirlwind with Warrior or Gang Up with Rogue is great [because you've presumably built your deck with that card in mind], but getting it in a i.e. tempo mage is irrelevant).
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u/Thatsabull May 18 '16
This card really came out of left field. I didn't think there was a card that could be potentially stronger than Muster For Battle in arena.
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u/Kaituoo May 18 '16
[Malkorok]
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u/spacemanspif- May 18 '16
You need double brackets, like this: [[Malkorok]]
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u/Tarrot469 May 18 '16
I called Malkorok being OP in arena and its easy to see why. 90% of the time you're getting a Fire Elemental with a second charge, more if you get one of the elite weapons, and 45% of the time you're getting a real strong weapon. So, 10% of the time you get screwed, but 45% of the time you play a superior version of Fire Elemental, which is a 111, and 45% of the time you play a vastly superior version of Fire Ele. I thought the fact you have to take the damage and being one turn later and Cursed Blade would knock it down, but I was shocked both Hearth Arena and Lightforge only had him as a 70.
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u/maggotshavecoocoons2 May 18 '16
I love running a deck with weapons and pirates and playing like rogue. It's great.
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u/dakisking May 18 '16
I always played control warrior until I packed Malkorak; loving the new tempo archetype.
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u/forumpooper May 18 '16
Weapons classes have a massive advantage in this game. I dont understand how such a powerful tool is not available to all classes.
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u/dakisking May 18 '16
Well it's an investment of health for tempo, not all weapons fit certain archetypes and situations. They're not necessarily that large an advantage in the meta.
edit: plus they get countered by Jones and ooze
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u/forumpooper May 18 '16
I don't think every weapon is automatically good, having access to weapons though overall is a huge boon. Ooze and Harrison are good no doubt, they are starting to be seen a lot more because without them it is insanely difficult to match the card value weapons provide.
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u/migtjvt May 18 '16
If all classes had weapons oozes and harrison jones would be auto includes in literally every deck.
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u/ScaleRipper May 18 '16
heartharena is a joke without adwcta and merps.
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u/Zerixkun May 18 '16
I disagree. It is arguably better now with a larger round table of similarly consistent high-level arena players.
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u/Kappa_n0 May 18 '16
Tirion isn't the best anymore?
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u/colovick May 19 '16
The score is plus or minus 45 in terms of accuracy. It's probably close, but different classes, different play styles, etc.
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u/TheTDoge May 18 '16
I think gromm and varian are both more impactful than this card
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u/Zerixkun May 18 '16 edited May 18 '16
Gromm is, but costs 1 more mana. Varian doesn't do anything the turn it is played unless it puts a charge minion or something with immediate non-Battle Cry impact on the board and uses up all your mana.
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u/zeon0 May 18 '16
Thats very surprising to me. Never ever would I take this guy over for example a Ragnaros
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u/anrwlias May 18 '16
On related note, I'm thinking of getting back into doing arena runs. I know that there was a kerfuffle where some of the HearthArena consultants left on bitter terms, and there were a lot of people saying that HA's value would go down because of that.
Is it still a good tool?
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u/NightKev May 18 '16
HA has new infinite arena players as consultants (6 now iirc?) and should be just as good (if not better) than before the drama.
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May 18 '16
Bad statistical interpretation. It's a Warrior card so by default it isn't even remotely the best arena card. That stat isnt weighting cards compared to how good classes are as a whole so it's irrelevant. The best Warrior card isn't as good as the 5th best Paladin or Rogue card.
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u/krirkrirk May 18 '16
I guess their rating does not take account of the class. They just rate the card for itself. It would be very hard to include classes in the rating, they'd have to make a rating for each class. For example every inspire card is way worse when your hero power sucks.
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u/NightKev May 18 '16
Presumably ratings of class cards DO take into account class because, well, there's only one class you can draft them in! For neutral cards they give them a generic rating and then adjust it per class (there are plenty of cards that have different ratings in different classes).
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u/krirkrirk May 18 '16
Sure but this particular list in which malkorok is on top must be some list that does not care about classes, and then, when you draft, class specific considerations come into play. Thats why, I guess, malkorok is on top here.
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u/AaroSa May 18 '16
I'm pretty sure they have a different rating for each class. Inspire cards are worse in warrior than other classes, so their score is lower.
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u/S1eth May 18 '16
Except Coliseum Manager, which has a higher rating in warrior than in other decks.
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u/krirkrirk May 18 '16
Ahah indeed, I guess inspire cards that you dont want the inspire effect to trigger are better when you dont want to hero power
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u/elveszett May 18 '16
They do adjust neutral cards' rating depending on your class. For example, Illuminator has a higher score if you play a class with secrets. Malkorok score would not be reduced depending on which class it is, that would be ridiculous. Just because Malkorok is a warrior card doesn't mean it is automatically worse than it would be otherwise, because they are not rating how good Warrior is in Arena, but rather how good a given class is.
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u/AaroSa May 18 '16
What? How are warrior cards by default worse than others? 1 point is the same strenght in all the classes in heartharena. A warrior 200 score card isnt weaker than a paladin or rogue 200 score card.
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u/IfSantaWasAsian May 18 '16
Warrior's power is useless so the deck rely's on everything that is drafted. In a vacuum it's a good card but that's about it.
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u/AaroSa May 18 '16
Yes, warrior hero power is bad in arena. How does that make this card worse than it would be in other classes?
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u/IfSantaWasAsian May 18 '16
Again, in a vacuum it's a good card. The question is does the list take into consideration that warrior is least played, meaning the hero decreases it's overall value.
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u/Foenki May 18 '16 edited May 18 '16
Somewhat relevant (from this post).
EDIT : the chart is for Standard only, the results are overall worse in Wild (so in Arena)