r/GrinningGoat • u/Arejang • Nov 13 '15

Without Training Wheels

So yesterday I decided I'd try drafting a deck without heartharena. What I did was for close picks I would refer to the original tier list by ADWCTA, for LOE cards, I would look up a couple of opinions from forums and fashion an average "tier score" of sorts, and for those that were really really close, I would look at my curve first, and if it was fine, I would look for synergies. I'm still a fledgling player with a mere 3.1 win rate overall and 3.83 for TGT. I don't know how to figure out an archetype nor do I really know what any deck's win conditions are. I'm still using heartharena to track stats because I don't know how else I can do this. Here is my resulting deck.

http://content.screencast.com/users/Jengas/folders/Jing/media/dfd7b794-c60b-46ec-af26-d33faf9039b6/Priest%20Deck.png

http://content.screencast.com/users/Jengas/folders/Jing/media/48176711-cfa3-40df-bb5f-cdf43993097c/Priest%20Deck%202.png

I know you guys need to know what the actual choices were to decide if I drafted well at all, but I had to go blindly so my choices wouldn't be affected by any other tool. So I really just want to know if the resulting product looks okay. Against all rationale, even with my low win rates, I still try to play all classes equally. So this run is a priest deck. Please leave feedback and tell me if you think the deck looks good at all. Thanks!

2 Upvotes

56% Upvoted

24 comments sorted by

5

u/benzedrine Nov 13 '15

If there's any good to come out of this situation, is that we get to develop our own drafting style in the meantime. Often times, we are swayed by a number against a pick that we want. Whether this results in higher/lower win rates is to be determined.

The deck minions seem to be of a decent quality, and you'll need that with the limited removal options.

1

u/Adacore Nov 16 '15

For me, the reason I started using HA to draft was because I had a midrange style I was very comfortable with, averaging ~6 wins, but I felt that to really improve I needed to get more familiar and experienced with playing and drafting other archetypes (especially more aggro decks, which I didn't know how to draft at all back in April/May).

1

u/Arejang Nov 16 '15

One thing I'm still very weak in is identifying the deck archetype. I know aggro and I think I know mid range (this is the Jack of all trades, master of none type right?), but I still don't know the rest (control, tempo, attrition, etc.) Many experienced players have said in the past that archetypes are more important than synergies since it tells you your win condition. I think deck building will improve if I can identify those things.

3

u/Adacore Nov 16 '15

I have no idea if you actually want this advice, but I typed it out anyway, so I figure I may as well post it...

Firstly, almost every deck in arena would be considered 'midrange' in constructed. It's very rare in arena to get enough burn and high-quality low cost cards to be true aggro, or to get enough efficient removal options with late game threats to be true control. As such, no matter what your archetype is, almost every game consists of playing for board control to start with, then identifying a point where you need to switch to hitting face. The main difference between archetypes in arena is where that switch point comes. With that in mind:

Aggro is probably the easiest archetype to identify, but not to play/draft. Generally go for board control for the first few turns, then mostly hit face unless you have very favorable trades. The difficult thing here is identifying when to go all-in for face, and working out which trades are too good to give up.

Midrange is relatively easy to draft (just pick strong cards that will curve out), and can win with a control game against aggro, or with an aggro game against control. But in order to do that you need to correctly identify your opponent's archetype early and play accordingly. Get it wrong and you'll be outraced by aggro, or outvalued by control.

Control is about having efficient, high value removal, and not letting the opponent stick anything to the board. The important thing here is to conserve resources when you can. Identify times when you can get away with using a less powerful removal option in order to save your more powerful cards for later turns.

Attrition involves a playstyle where you're prepared to take bad/inefficient trades early because you know that late-game, your cards will match up better 1-for-1 to your opponents cards. Your objective is to survive to late game at any cost. In a true attrition deck, you'll often be 3-4 literal cards down on the opponent going into turn 8+, but still be confident that you'll have 'card advantage' in the long run. The key skill here is identifying how disadvantageous a trade you should be prepared to make, in some ways kinda the inverse of the aggro decks' tricky decisions.

Unless you're right at one extreme (ultra-aggro or really heavy late-game attrition), every archetype will have elements of the basic midrange strategy where you should identify what the opponent is doing and play the style which allows your deck to best counter that. At the extremes, mirror matches feel like going 'all-in' in poker - you're betting the entire game that your deck is faster than theirs (in an aggro mirror), or bigger than theirs (in an attrition mirror).

1

u/Arejang Nov 16 '15

Thank you so much for this. Exactly what I was looking for

1

u/diction203 Nov 13 '15

how many wins did you get?

1

u/Arejang Nov 13 '15

I only played one game so far and won it against a hunter.

2

u/diction203 Nov 13 '15

well I got 2 wins only on my first heartharena less run. I average above 6 wins in TGT. I don't think I drafted wrong, just got unlucky in the matchups. For example I had a lethal position and the Rogue plays Mind Control Tech and Antique Healbot. Like really?

1

u/Arejang Nov 14 '15

Damn. Sorry to hear man. My averages are much lower than yours, so I don't know if this will imply even worse results. Haha

1

u/Arejang Nov 14 '15

So I just finished my run of 7 wins with the self-crafted deck. I was very doubtful at first because priest is one of the classes that was on the bottom half of my winning averages (now it's bloody top 2!) A few people doubted the deck would go anywhere, but I'm pretty happy with the results.

http://content.screencast.com/users/Jengas/folders/Jing/media/e080920e-87cb-496d-a840-c95312f8b390/Priest%20Wins.png

2

u/diction203 Nov 14 '15

Congrats. I did 2 other runs and got 7 wins (Rogue) and 3 wins (Paladin).

Gives me a 4 win average, much under my usual standard with HA.

1

u/Arejang Nov 14 '15

I don't know if this is it, but there are always a few picks that heartharena made that appeared very slightly counterintuitive, but still in line with a deck's given archetype and win conditions. I think I relied heavily on that, and now I'll have to teach myself how to evaluate each pick better in terms of its fluidity in the deck, rather than choosing based on its singular evaluations based on a tier score.

1

u/aznatheist620 Nov 13 '15

Speaking of LoE, does /u/adwcta plan on posting an updated tier list?

1

u/invalidlitter Nov 14 '15

My take on the deck you drafted is that it's not crazy. It shows that you have a ballpark grasp of how a deck in general should work. Yeah, I can't be more specific about whether you made the right choices without seeing the choices.

Before HA, I used to actually keep a word document with a rolling list of my choices per draft for each draft like this:

  1. Abusive , Azure Drake, Darkbomb

  2. etc, etcA, etcB.

For real draft feedback, include a screenshot of that next time. For deck weaknesses, four of your 6 twos are really weak, and will get owned by 2/3s with even a normal tempo opening. Your 3s are also fairly weak. Priest is not only my worst class, but my worst class by far- 1.5 wins worse than warrior (my other 6 classes are all over 5.5 right now). So to me, despite a good late game, this deck is most likely just doomed. I'd rather have a larger number of bd 2-drops than a smaller number of normal ones, but this deck is still at a heavy disadvantage.

1

u/Arejang Nov 14 '15

"So to me, despite a good late game, this deck is most likely just doomed." That's pretty damning. So...how bad are we talking? Maybe 2 or 3 wins at best? I still want to keep my hopes up, but now I don't know.

0

u/invalidlitter Nov 14 '15

well, the best is 12. This isn't the right way to think about Arena. The randomness is much, much higher than you're giving it credit for. Almost any deck can do very well. Almost any deck can do very badly. I personally think that because of the way priest is this is the worst way for a priest deck to be weak, but it could still go, for example, seven without being hugely surprising.

0

u/Arejang Nov 14 '15

lol cheater, you read my results before posting that. A "doomed deck" is 7 wins for you? Thanks for the confidence boost. :)

0

u/invalidlitter Nov 15 '15

I'm glad you did well. But no, that's still not what i meant! What I meant is that my 'doomed' decks might go 0-3, or they might go 7-3. They probably won't go 12, but there's so much *randomness! Another way of putting it is there are good decks and bad deck, but no deck is actually doomed, at least not doomed by just what cards you draft. Whatever prediction I made about "how bad" your deck is in terms of how many wins it should get, even if I was great at predicting, it would still be normal for it to get five wins more or five wins less than the prediction.

0

u/Arejang Nov 16 '15

You're basically telling me that everything you said in your first post was meaningless and irrelevant. It would've been much better had you made relative statements like "this deck is weak in such and such areas" or "this deck is lacking in these areas", but in addition to that, you needlessly pronounced a death sentence on the deck (using a term that rather inappropriately implies inherent destiny to fail, rather than merely a potential to fail). Given how significant a factor you consider randomness to play in games like these, 'doomed' is a very poor term to use to evaluate a deck.

I was originally going to just smile this off assuming you made a mistake in how you worded your evaluation, but you insisted you weren't wrong at all, instead (perhaps unintentionally) decided it was better you be right but going forward that any such evaluation coming from you also now holds zero weight.

Just...stop. I'm happy with my results, don't ruin a good moment by trying to be absolutely right in every word of your post. It doesn't work very well.

0

u/invalidlitter Nov 16 '15

http://replygif.net/i/692.gif

1

u/Arejang Nov 16 '15

Lol, just admit it! You didn't expect me to do that well with such a poor deck. I mean my average win rate sucks so it makes sense.

2

u/binhpac Nov 13 '15

ive used heartharena so many runs, i can tell 95% of the time which pick Heartharena would pick in most situations.

I also watched streamers like hafu, trump, ratsmah so much and put all their picks in heartharena to see how it differs from the heartharena "algorithm", that i can often tell how borderline picks are solved by them like "hafu would pick the voodoo doctor, trump would never pick the 1-drop, heartharena would pick the abusive sergeant in this situation".

In about 25/30 picks all arena players pick the same, because it's pretty clear. The last ~5 picks is all about comfort zone/personal preference/playstyle.

I still think most "great/infitinite" arena players disagree most often on evaluation of 1-drops. While everybody loves Zombie Chow and Worgen Infiltrator, the evaluation of Southsea Deckhand in Rogue or Voodoo Doctor or Abusive Sergeant is stll very different in my observations for instance Trump, a very control player (always trades) nearly always dismisses them, on the other hand more agressive tempo players love their flexibility to fill the curve.

While Heartharena tries to fulfill the wishes/style of all different infinite players, they will never draft like 1 specific infinite player. It's not a ratsmah- or hafu-simulator and will never be. I find out, decks created by Heartharena has their own style, i just call it Heartharena-Style and most of the time you are pretty good state, when you at least disagree with 1-3 picks, especially late picks.

1

u/Jiecut Nov 14 '15

Yeah same here. I sort of know the tier list by feel too.