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No words to describe the feeling, but 1000s of words to describe the journey! XD

Disclaimer:

Wall of text post. Humble brags and shameless plugs incoming.

First off, let me congratulate all players that achieved their leaderboard goals and even if not, it's never a small feat to make it on the list, so as always kudos to all.

Secondly, I wanted to give a massive fist bump to the community members, not only here, but just the Arena community in general. It's easy to bring people down, but at the end of the day we are all looking for that bit of progress in the right direction, and the support in the Arena community has been bigly.

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Context - Number 1 NA August 2018 (8.80 win average)

I'm seriously overwhelmed. There's so many emotions - joy, relief, pride, etc. The support has been unreal, and reaching #1 after setting such insane expectations for myself - I just feel proud. To me it's the pinnacle of this little hobby for myself.

Some random stats to digest:

• * Druid - 6 runs @ 9.5
• * Priest - 2 runs @ 9.5
• * Rogue - 11 runs @ 8.82
• * Warlock - 10 runs @ 8.70
• * Shaman - 1 run @ 4.00
• * Total win rates: Coin 71.26% / First 83.33%
• * Best 30 contained 8x 12 win runs
• * Lowest run - 1x 3-3
• * 23 out of 30 runs - 7+ wins
• * Highest win rate against Warrior 86.67%
• * Lowest win rate against Warlock 68.63%
• * 102 total win streak over 10 consecutive runs

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"Everyone starts somewhere." This has always been what i've told players that were struggling and trying to better their Arena performance. Here's my journey:

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Started playing Arena back when the game released, and I like many people I religiously followed Trump and his tierlist to learn the ropes. I've played very casually at first, mainly as a F2P player and after struggling with collecting enough gold to build contstructed decks (my first crafts were 2x Azure Drakes, and 2x Argent Commanders), I decided to focus a bit more on Arena just for long term sustainability of the game. At first I struggled - mainly getting 0-3 wins. While I never was truly horrible at the game, it was disheartening hearing about "infinite" players and how it seemed like everyone but me was farming Arena "easily". At this point - it felt so far away, almost impossible when I hear about these fabled 7 win players.

The biggest thing that changed the way I played Arena was getting a deck tracker for my desktop. Not only does this allow you to review your past games, it keeps your deck and draw order information readily on your screen. The other change was shifting my Arena play to PC only. At this point, I felt confident I could consistently break even with my entrance fee and since I never really played high volume, I saw my gold rising up over time with quest rewards while supplementing my collection with Arena packs here and there, which was nice. I even made alternate accounts on EU and Asia to squeeze in extra practice on weird classes when I had some extra time.

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While slogging through the 3-5 win threshold for most of 2015, I decided I needed outside help, at least a way for myself personally to bounce ideas off better players. I sought out communities to talk and discuss about Arena. First, the official bnet forums then Hearthpwn, eventually Reddit ArenaHs. This was probably around the turn of the new year in 2016. It honestly felt hopeless to break out of this 3-5 win barrier, so I sought out a way to find like minded individuals to discuss this game further and hopefully improve. I mean if you're on this reddit, 99% of you are probably here looking for a community of like minded individuals, and most of us hope to improve along the way.

I cannot give enough credit to the guys at r/GrinningGoat - These guys are invaluable as a learning resource and really were ahead of their time back in 2016. Great insights and disgestable content. As we all know, they are still very much top of their game today. The years following these guys definitely helped in speeding up the learning curve for Arena.

My struggles breaking out of the 5-6 win barrier are well documented on hearthpwn https://www.hearthpwn.com/forums/hearthstone-game-modes/the-arena/122024-boozors-arena-drafts-blog - Since leaderboards didn't exist at the time, I was looking for a way to show progress and used a Blog format while adding discussion points were useful here. I feel at the 5-6 win mark, improving meant squeezing more wins out of your WORST classes, and small improvements in your favored classes. I was becoming more critical of my own play, and there was more reflection on past game play instead of merely shrugging off runs. Additionally, playing while focused as well as taking your time probably helped easily add another 0.5-1 win to my win rate at this stage. Another HUGE factor was learning how to play Rogue. I've never played Rogue in constructed and had ZERO knowledge of the class in Arena. Took me about 200 games of tanking my overall average to get Rogue to the point where it had become my best class. The fundamentals of the class are not immediately apparent so it requires practice, but the class is now one of my favorites in Arena and is very rewarding to play.

After 9 months of focused tracking and a ton of volume, I was able to score my first "month" hitting hard infinite at 7 wins (first real break through after playing since 2014). Fast forward a year to 2017 and I had stopped playing Hearthstone all together.....

RL commitments and a lack of drive to play Firelands Portals on every turn after turn 7 drained me of the love of the game. I felt without a meaningful way to continue progressing or even comparing against my peers (remember spreadsheet guy?), I just wasn't hungry anymore. I took a break that next 10 months spanning 3 expansions....

I made a post on reddit upon returning to HS after 10 months off, and what a change! Synergy picks, Leaderboards, "micro adjustments", all these nuances that were totally new to me coming back, as well as 3 sets (MSG, UNG, KFT). The game felt fresh, I felt hungry to perform and with a meaningful way to measure my own performance against my peers, it felt good to come back.

First month back - made leaderboards during the pre-Bonemare nerf meta. Unbelievable I thought, game fundamentals don't change. Tempo gameplay still was my bread and butter. Games easy right.

Immediately into KNC, I felt the struggles of adjusting to classes i've ignored that were now relevant. Priest, Shaman, and Hunters become good options, and now Arena had flipped on it's head. I suddenly lost about 1.5 wins off my average adjusting to the meta and I did not recover for at least 150 runs. Throw in special events (dual, and wild), and what seemed to me like a TON of frequent changes, I was just having a horrible time adjusting at this time. I needed to learn again.

Time to take my own advice and watch other streamers again: Found some good small streams (/s) and I re-learned how to analyze my drafts differently from watching /u/shadybunny, and re-learned critical fundamentals (esp control) from /u/dreadsss , I was making progress slowly but surely.

Cue bucket systems and WW - and the resulting dreaded Priest meta rotating out, I was able to finish 2 more times on the leaderboard following the shift to a more tempo focused meta. This was obviously a great sign since it showed progress. Playing more definitely helped as well.

Now with the new release of BDP and further refinements to the bucket system, reduced frequency of powerful spells and a focus on minion driven, tempo based decks, I felt it was a perfect storm of events that led to my finish in August. I felt re-learning how to evaluate cards in a different perspective helped me build more coherent decks out of mediocrity sometimes (most of my decks score about 65-70). I had high expectations after the 1st 10 runs of the month, and with 3 powerhouse classes that I felt comfortable playing I was having a great month mid way flirting with a 9.80 avg over 18 runs. I was clearly highrolling class selection, but felt very comfortable playing every game. During the home stretch, anxiety was building, and even though my average was slipping from it's unsustainable mid way mark, I'd hate for my great start to erode from a poor back stretch. Upon completion, I was relieved, and had high hopes of hitting the top... Anticipation for the next 3 weeks builds...

On the day of the leaderboard announced, there really was no words - just Poggers - the competition at the top was so fierce, but for this day, I can say I am the best of the bunch for now. Truly an unreal feeling. I'm grateful, humbled, and proud. So many things needed to go right, and after a year coming back to the game, I felt I had grown enough to capitalize on this perfect storm.

It really did feel like all this "work" and hours playing, talking about and analyzing this children's card game, really "paid" ? off omegalul.

I'm going to have to soak it in for a bit longer because to achieve the feat again would require miraculous luck, as well as unreal game play. At times, I feel very pedestrian and make mistakes all the time, so I will never claim to be the most technical, or the most intuitive, or consistent player, but at least for this moment in time I can be the most grateful.

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Cheers to aspirations and motivating each other to do our best :) <3

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Thanks for reading.

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TL DR - Grateful try-hard hits 1 NA, feels need to post long winded emo post - hashtag much feels

Special SO to /u/talrielz - ty for your support bro - we did it !

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