What is the current state of Arena?

How have you been finding the Arena and what's the best strategy?

Thought I had a decent deck of good value stats and OP cards with a good curve but ended up going 1-3 as priest.
since classic, I've always spent 90% of my gold on arena runs, but I took a break over the last 2 expansions.

The last few expansions card generation has gotten more and more important. Curving out on the other hand, while still important, is not as important as it used to be. This is mostly because swings are getting bigger. Cards like Scavenging Shivarra are capable of destroying huge boards while tempoing out a minion at the same time.

I haven't had the change to play priest yet this expansion - I average about half a run a day - but what I've seen from my opponents, nothing much has changed. They all have Thoughtsteal, Mind Control, Apotheosis, Renew and plenty of board clears. Card generation, heal, and board control. A specific new card that took me by surprise multiple times is Initiation. Before the expansion was out I thought of it as a card similar to Holy Water, but it's more like the product of Scavenging Shivarra and Mind Control. Fits right into their arsenal.

Your main goal with priest is usually to outlast your opponent. Don't spam the board too hard, but always try to have a minion to stick into your next turn. This way you're constantly threatening Apotheosis and Power Word: Feast. In the late game Mind Control is your best friend.

The occasional tempo priest still exists, but I think you should only draft towards that if you were lucky enough to draft cards like Power Word: Feast, Frazzled Freshman and Dragonmaw Overseer early on.

Unlucky runs with priest will always exist. That doesn't necessarily mean that your deck was bad or that you played badly. Many priests cards are really situational. When an opponent slips through all the cracks there isn't much that you can do about it.

I have clocked in a bit of Arena recently and I have to say, it is pretty terrible right now.

The game boils down to either a) you have a good curve early and win or b) your randomly discovered cards are better/worse than your opponent. The worst experiences I have had were against Mage and Priest who are able to pull answer after answer out of their ass (or just  use your own deck’s cards to kill you). I

It's really imbalanced right now. Mage and Priest are by far the best classes, other classes such as Warrior and Shaman are in the dumpster. I had several rather high-win runs and it was more or less the same: Get a good class and take every card generation offered. If you manage to get a fair amount of card generation and a somewhat decent curve that is easily a potential high win deck. In the higher win area, lets say 7+ wins, I mostly encountered value decks and occasionally some tempo decks. Often games just felt like it came down to who had more luck with card generation.

I was worried this meta might be a complete mess, but I am honestly having quite allot of fun. Sure, there are some extremely annoying matches and moments, but the balancing in this meta is kinda like ''let's get every class a ton of powerful options''. I personally like it way more than the previous one. Back then something like Twin Tyrant was a monster you were completely afraid of, since it would often decide the match. Now the card is still very powerful, but it's just one of the powerful tools you have at your disposal.

And it really needs to be said, the amount of card generation/discovery right now is nuts. In majority of other meta's, a card like Twilight Runner would be a super-premium card, while now he is ''just'' a very nice card.