Amidst all the Wailing Caverns hype, Celestalon - one of the most active Hearthstone developers who traverse the Twitterverse while keeping a watchful eye on everything - took a moment recently to dive into the stats beyond a couple of very rare achievements. The results will probably not come as a great surprise to at least some of you:
Quote From Celestalon I was curious, so I just looked it up. Flawless Duel-It-All is actually the *second* rarest achievement, completed by only a few people. The rarest is Flawless Azeroth Gladiator (same thing, for Arena), that has been completed by a whopping *1* person, worldwide.
Now, we know well that these two achievements haven't been exactly made equal, which can explain the differences in accomplishment levels: the Duels one also counts Casual runs, where there is no real downside to retiring and starting over the moment one suffers a single loss. Or rerolling for the right class/treasure combo. Unlike Heroic, where there is always a price to be paid in the form of gold/cash and lowering your rating, and where more competitive players reside.
That said, it is still quite a feat to hit 12-0 across the board anywhere, requiring no small amount of commitment. We are glad to see it gets properly recognized even by the people in charge. In fact, more than you might think. While we haven't been given the actual name of that one Arena die-hard, we heard about this:
Quote From Celestalon I believe we attempted to reach out to them when they achieved it (I think it was a month or so ago?), but they hadn't responded, last I heard.
It's pretty cool the Hearthstone team keeps tabs on such happenings, as they could easily fly under the radar. But, according to a few community sleuths, we might have actually known the identity of that person from a while ago, and the lack of official confirmation could have stemmed from some form of miscommunication. Apparently it is one ShtanUdachi:
Quote From Kai A member of the Russian Arena community has informed me that @ShtanUdachi has completed the Arena 12-0 with all 10 classes achievement. Shtan has just under 47,000 Arena wins on Europe server alone as of April 10.
That all seems to check out, and if true, late congratulations are definitely in order. As the person in question is actually one that might be familiar to anyone here who has been following the competitive scene some years ago, back when Hearthstone Championship Tour was its own thing:
Ah, good times. Back to the "overachieving" matters at hand, we certainly hope to see more related stories, tidbits, and interesting statistics behind some of them. It's always fun to learn about! We know that Q&A stalwart Iksar also enjoys dabbling in this area, as his tweet at the start of this calendar year garnered a fair amount of interest.
Maybe we even get to find out how Heroic-only Duels fare as the various metas there have certainly been a lot more tumultuous and chaotic - with all the changes to Hero Powers, Treasures, Loot Buckets, and the way various offering rates work. It's still a new thing compared to Arena, an environment we've known since forever. Which also saw some changes along the way (with various mysterious micro- or macro-adjustments), yet remains quite stable in its accessibility and more than occasional unpredictability.
Meanwhile, those of us who appreciate these two game modes for what they offer (despite all-too-justified rants at merciless RNG here and there) still have got a lot to aspire to.
How about yourselves, any luck in getting far in either mode ever since the achievements have been introduced? Maybe even before that - not just 12-0 runs, but any 12-X that you might have under your belt? It can certainly take a good amount of time and effort to hit the highest scores even once!
Comments
Not really rare as anyone can attempt it. Rare that anyone has done it which puts it at being the 2 most difficult achievements to complete
I've never gotten a 12-0 in Arena, although i did make the leaderboards at some point in EU and lost count of my 12 win runs. You need to playa way too much to get those achievements...
Wouldn't lowering your duels rating make it easier to get the achievement since it influences matchmaking?
Yes, assuming it even matters that much for matchmaking (we frankly don't know with the way they do things). But that point was referring to Heroic where you generally don't want that to happen to you as it means losing a fair amount.
... does Boozor have something to say about that one person who completed it?
He might have done it before the achievements, but didnt get those runs count.
I myself have done 12-0s Arena with several classes (not all) and it didnt recognize my progress retroactively 😢
Guessing he did it after bc that will trigger the achievment. So guessing they only tracked after it was implemented. But he's earned that 30 achievement points for finishing it with all classes. Seems about fair ;)
Oh, man, my memory doesn't even go that far back. There is this growing sentiment among many Arena players that it's just become harder and more chaotic in the recent years. Experienced fans of the mode remain, while the more casual playerbase got Battlegrounds, Duels, and even easier access to Ranked since, spreading all over. On top of things like Discover and Rush creating far more explosive resolutions during games.
From personal experience, it does feel like I very rarely stumble upon somebody who is clearly misplaying, whereas it was quite common during the early years.
Yeah, i used to play solely Arena every day or every other day, but the amount of card generation that has been introduced in last few years just completely ruined it for me. Skill still matters to do well on average in a long term, but the games are just not enjoyable for me anymore.
Your first 12 wins is exciting. Your first 12-0 is exciting. Getting 12 wins with all classes is exciting. But eventually you get used to it. Probably not with all classes, but I've had my fair share of 12-0. And then suddenly there are achievements and you get excited again because you got to do it all over again. One moment I remember all to well. The achievements where just implemented so I didn't have any 12 wins yet and I was playing the final boss with an 11-0 Demon Hunter. I had lethal in hand, but BANG!, the excitement kicked in again and it made me misplay. I missed lethal and lost the game because of that. Won the next game, so I still got to 12, but this still haunts my dreams sometimes. Since the achievements that has been my only shot at a 12-0, though I'm not playing nearly as much Arena as I used to. Made it to 12 with Demon Hunter, Rogue and Warlock so I still have a long way to go.
For a F2P player to get as many wins as he has, they would have to spend 7,050,000 gold.
Lucky for F2P players Arena is also the best way to earn gold once you can go infinite like ShtanUdachi.
The average person can't go "infinite". And I always find it amusing when reddit or forum threads have a plethora of people saying that they "go infinite" all the time. I believe blizzard stated a few years back that the TOP players of arena in the world had an average winrate of something like 5-6 wins? (again that is their average over time). Things like that make it pretty obvious that people are either experiencing cognitive dissonance when they talk about their arena runs, or they are lying.
I also wouldn't encourage any F2P person to play arena in order to earn gold. Especially not with the pass changes that occurred this year. Yes it's a good way to earn free packs and gold on the side if you manage to go 7+, but the average F2P person is not that skilled, nor would they consistently hit that mark.
I think many people (my past self included) consider going infinite to never run out of gold despite multiple daily arena runs, so basically factoring in the 50 daily gold into the equation. Also, a 5,5 - 6 win average is pretty close to a break even and much more achievable than the 7-8 from the top leaderboard players. Even if it‘s not a majority, I wouldn’t be surprised to find exactly those people discussing in arena related Reddit posts.
As for new players, arena is certainly not a way to „earn“ money but you quickly get to the point were you can get a bunch of discounted packs. If only you would get a pack token and not a specific pack I would grind arena all day since it’s more useful to safe up instead of buying more Barrens packs for me rn
You're not wrong there, but I also wasn't stating the opposite. I was merely saying that ShtanUdachi's total amount of gold is basically infinite, as he isn't just any player. He usually is #1 on the Europe leaderboard, and if not, very close to the #1 spot and to get there you'll need an average of around 9 or so. The average winrate of the top arena players is, as I assume you already know, solely dependent on the sample size.
And I would 100% encourage F2P players to play arena once they have learned the basic Hearthstone skills in constructed. Not to earn gold necessarily, but to get cheaper packs and increasingly better rewards as you'll inevitably become a better arena player over time. The downside of this method is that you cannot hoard as much gold as possible in order to spend it all whenever there's a new expansion. I usually have around 2 to 3k gold when a new expansion launches. The rest is spend on arena and packs being bought throughout the expansion cycle.
its kinda funny that the rarest achievements ever only give 30 points and there are others that give 50 points
I vaguely remember Dean mentioning in one of his Q&As that he would team up with Celestalon and they would go through each achievement to determine how challenging it is and adjust the achievement points rewarded on a case by case basis.
True, there should be a cardback or something.
I do not think it is good to have a cardback for achievement one person got
I get where you're coming from and that is most likely why there isnt anything, so ppl wouldnt feel bad not being able to get it or didnt chase a pipe dream (for most ppl) wasting gold and/or qq about its exclusivity. But at the same time, it would be nice to have a bigger celebration than what is there right now