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anyone still play the Arena? (Lightforge Arena Tier List updated with all DoD cards)

Hi guys,

Back in the dark days before there was a Battlegrounds in HS, an ancient game mode existed called the "Arena". The Arena was a place where players could go and draft cards and face opponents who employed a maddeningly diverse set of threats and answers. Quick thinking, endless variety. It was far from perfect, with the endless human experimentation and dirty buckets, but some of us called it home. These days, you may still stumble upon these abandoned lines of code if you hastily misclick toward the right side in your zeal to enter the Battlegrounds.

This post is about how you can survive in the new Descent of Dragons expansion if you do find yourself accidentally (or purposefully?) in an Arena draft.

The Lightforge Arena Tier List is still here. Together with /u/merps4248, we have been keeping this tier list of the value of all cards in the Arena updated through every meta change for the past 5+ years. We've enhanced the algorithm behind it so much that it's overtaken our human-driven analysis. The algorithm takes into account everything a top player would account for, including when to play the card (based on board state, your deck, your hand, life totals), when to hold the card (in favor of another card, trying to hit synergies), and when your minions/weapons should choose to attack face, and how effective they are at trading, and so much more, and overlays the precision of a machine's ability to keep accurate track of all the odds and calculation speed. For DoD, we've tweaked the system to provide better calculations for hero power usage, weapon charges, rush health, card pick rates, and of course, dragon synergies.

We hope some people may still find joy in the Arena, and use from a tier list. For those stubborn Arena players out there here are the totally busted Top 3 Descent of Dragons Cards:

Faceless Corrupter - 193. 5 mana 5/4 Rush. Battlecry: Transform one of your minions into a copy of this. For reference, Wrapped Golem, the previous record holder and a card that thoroughly warped the meta for Saviors of Uldum, was valued at 160. Eccentric Scribe was 150. Pre-nerf Giggling Inventor was 210+. So, between "meta-warping" and "so busted it had to be nerfed", Faceless Corrupter is closer to needing a good wack from the nerfhammer. Most minions that survive a turn in the Arena will be worse than a 5/4, and the ability to gain an extra attack and a buff, while putting a 5/4 rush body on the board is ridicuous in the tempo-obsessed nature of Arena. This card's existence will force you to clear the board every turn after turn 5, or risk being heavily punished. By turn 7, you'll be punished anyway, as your opponent can turn their 2-drops into 5/4 rush minions. The swing here is simply unmanageable, and holding a board lead is now meaningless for all classes past turn 6. So, get your damage in early, or brace for the swing to prepare to swing back, rather than prioritizing incremental tempo (the typical Arena strategy). This card will simply dominate the Arena meta in a way unseen since pre-nerf Giggling Inventor.

Twin Tyrant - 165. 8 mana 4/10. Dragon. Battlecry: Deal 4 damage to two random enemy minions. When it was revealed in Blizzcon, everyone in the Arena subreddit freaked out and was sure this was going to be the OP Arena killer of the set. That was premature. But, this indeed WOULD have been the best neutral ever printed if Faceless Corrupter didn't exist. If Faceless Corrupter means the board is crazy by turn 7, this guy guarantees it by turn 8. Do your damage before these turns guys. After this, it'll be swing city with these two neutrals and the whole board is unpredictable with previously gained advantages playing only a minor role. On the flip side, if you're not going to doing great on the board before turn 7 with your deck, grab these guys and every taunt and stall card you can get. As long as you can protect your face, the board is fully up for grabs in the late-mid game for all classes.

Evasive Wyrm - 164. 6 mana 5/3. Dragon. Divine Shield. Rush. Can't be targeted by spells or hero powers. If it weren't for Faceless Corrupter and Twin Tyrant, THIS card would have been the best neutral ever printed. =D Yes, it's all kind of silly at this point. But this guy effectively deals 5 damage, then 5 damage again, and even works without a target thanks to the evasive quality preventing most pings. It's flexibility is high. And, at 5 damage, same as Faceless Corrupter, this card ensures that the old Arena breakpoint of 5 health being relatively safe has officially moved to 6 health.

Honorable Mentions aka: cards that would normally be the top neutral card of a normal HS set release historically (for reference, Bonemare is 136): Big Ol' Whelp (140), Troll Batrider (137), Bad Luck Albatross (137), and Fire Hawk (135).

Also, the class cards of DoD are just as ridiculous as the neutrals. Druid's Top 2 class cards are DoD cards (Embiggen and Emerald Explorer). Hunter's Top 4(!) are DoD (Primordial Explorer, Phase Stalker, Diving Gryphon, Stormhammer). Top 3 of 4 for Mage (Rolling Fireball, Azure Explorer, Arcane Breath) and Shaman (Lightning Breath, Storm's Wrath, Squallhunter); 4 of 6 for Priest (Chronobreaker, Grave Rune, Breath of the Infinite, Whispers of EVIL). It's going to be a wild ride.

Full DoD card values list is available here.

We also spent 6hr+ last night explaining the valuation of each card and how it would play out in the upcoming meta. For a quick summary of the meta, I recommend the "meta" video, and the "top 7 cards" video. But the full playlist is here for the Arena fanatics who want a class by class breakdown (or to learn why Hot Air Balloon is actually NOT a good card), and we'll be doing a rebroadcast on [twitch](twitch.tv/GrinningGoat) tonight starting 1hr from this post. Also, you can post any questions about specific cards here, and I'll do my best to answer.

Enjoy, and hope to see you in the Arena tomorrow!

ADWCTA (Grinning Goat)

  • Iksar
    Posted 6 years ago (Source)

    https://www.reddit.com/r/ArenaHS/comments/e7vi15/an_arena_analysis_full_dod_written_card_review/

    Written + Video reviews there.

    /consume

  • Iksar
    Posted 6 years ago (Source)

    Commenting only on things that stand out to me:

    Neutral

    Untamed Beastmaster: This whenever its in Arena performs as one of the best cards in the game via HSreplay. Why is it 2 points lower than a generic 3/4 with its pure upside snowball effect?

    Camoflagued Dirigible: Not the score, but you were pretty insistent a 7 7/7 was better than a 6 6/6 and a 5 5/5 last night, and now War Golem's below both stat lines. Was this a last-minute Algo fix?

    Kronx Dragonhoof: Still listed as being in Arena.

    Gruul: I know 8 8/8 is worse than 7 7/7, but how much value is on Gruul's effect? I thought the snowball every turn would make it at least a few more points better than a War Golem.

    Druid

    Strength in Numbers: What is the assume statline that you would get out of this card? IIRC, you said something like a 4/4 or 4/5. I get the delay matters, but we've seen other cards before that have had delays on their effect (Mechanical Dragonling, the 1/1 that deathrattled a 5/5, the asleep for 2 turns card from Taverns of Time) that didn't have this much of a penalty attatched. Also, how much value is put into the fact that, because of the delay, when it goes off you're significantly over-tempoing the board on that turn. 1 mana delayed summoning a 4/5 in a few turns isn't great, but if its turn 5 and you burst out 9 mana worth of stuff, you have instant board-control and its going to be really hard for the opponent to deal with all of that.

    Knight of the Wild: You are factoring in that this needs to be in your hand to get the discount, right? A 106 for a 7 mana 6/6 that requires you to play beasts to reduce it to maybe a 5 mana 6/6 seems real high.

    Hunter

    Bestial Wrath: This just seems wrong to me for this to be so premium. Everyone has had experience with this card, in sets much more beast-centric than the ones we have, and it is situationally useful at best. There's no way this card should be 4 points higher than Bonemare.

    Timber Wolf: Again, tons of experience playing with the card, the set is not beast-centric nor has many beasts from hand, I can't see how this is rated better than the 1 mana 2/2.

    Phase Stalker: How many secrets are you expected to have with this? Agree it's strong, just don't see it this strong considering most Hunter secrets are ok and not something you'd go out of your way to pick unless you already had this.

    Venomstrike Trap: This seems... low to me? It performed as one of the best Hunter cards in the Wild meta and really in any, its one of the strongest independent Hunter secrets there is, and its rated lower than an Explosive Trap?

    Mage

    Pyromaniac: The ping effect is worth that little? That's extremely easy to get off, plus this has soft-taunt just because of the threat of the ping/draw, so I thought this would be worth a lot more than the other 3/4s.

    Paladin

    Skyclaw: I understand the reasoning, but having seen the card played on the deckbuilding streams this weekend, the card looked real good even just on its own. Its real powerful if you play it with initiative, and even behind the 1/2 has soft-taunt.

    Spirit of the Tiger: This seems high. You need to play this, then play at least 4 mana worth of spells to justify it as an average card, and Paladins don't have big spells to play, especially with the sets rotating in.

    Shirvallah: Likewise, people have been drafting decks with 0 spells in their deck in other classes that have much better spells, and in Paladin, you're not only going to draft 15 mana worth of spells, but play them, just to make Shirvallah active, usually well past T10, and its a 79?

    Priest

    Seance: Seance can target any minion, allied or enemy. Convert can only target enemy minions. Why is Seance rated a point lower than Convert while being strictly better?

    Twilight Whelp: How much of its score is driven as being an activator for Breath/Chronobreaker? FWIW, I understand but I disagree with how high the scores are on Breath/Chrnobreaker but that's just more with dragon Priest experience than analytics.

    Grave Rune: Cross-class, but Shaman has access to Ancestral Spirit, which is 2 mana give a minion deathrattle: Resummon it, and its only a 103. Grave Rune is Ancestral Spirit x2, with equal scaling/mana on the effect, but much harder to pull off, because you are usually spending 4 mana to do nothing on that turn (unless you immediately trade the minion off). Saying this is one of the best cards in the game when he have a very similar card that performs as anything but really seems off to me?

    Rogue

    Bloodsail Flybooter: This reminds me of Fire Fly where, yes 1/1s are bad, but you're getting stuff to put in your hand to trigger combos/fill in curve/get Plaguebringered/Plague Scientisted, that the value of these cheap tokens in hand is worth more than the sum of their parts. Has there ever been a 1/1 Battlecry put stuff in your hand that was bad, especially in Rogue which really likes 1-drops?

    Plaguebringer: Just the Rotation Reminder that this is one of the best Rogue cards in the game and rated lower than a Blade Flurry. :p Also, it seriously is a lot better than Plague Scientist (which generally can't come out until 5/6 due to needing to combo it) and is 16 points lower.

    Blade Flurry: Why is this rated so high anyway? You have to combo it with one of the 3 Rogue weapons that have 3 or more attack (two of which, Fork/Assasins Blade, you don't want to pick anyways) to be decent factoring in destroying the weapon for the effect, and that just seems way too unlikely to justify the score.

    Shaman

    Drakkari Defender: 107 seems real high for the card. 2/8 is a real bad statline for a taunt (and with the overload you're paying 6 mana for a poorly stated 5 mana taunt), and the 3 overload means you can't afford to play it in the early game where the card would be useful since you'd skip your next turn for all intents.

    Bandersmosh: May be misremembering, but I thought you guys were pretty low on it last night in the review, and now it ends up as a 130. Did I remember wrong or did something change going into today?

    Warlock

    Malchezaar's Imp: Warlocks have a grand total of 3 discard cards in the sets that are in that you'd want to take (Soulfire, Dark Bargain, and Shriek which damages your Imp and might kill it to prevent the effect). Considering how low you rate 1/3s, it seems odd that the Imp is rated so high when the chance of the effect going off is so low.

    Silverware Golem: Was going to include it in the Imp, but made it separate: Why is it rated 10 points lower than effectively a 3 mana 3/3 in Southsea Captain or Gobglide Tech which will almost never have their effects trigger? This has seemingly negative points for its effect.

    Blood Troll Sapper: This is rated worse than Captured Jormungaar, which has one more health, while having an effect that can deal a lot of damage face and having soft taunt in that it needs to be removed (and not just stalled off) or else a lot of extra damage can go face. Is its effect being treated properly?

    Warrior

    Smolderthorn Lancer: I get its understatted for its cost, but considering that a lot of the dragon cards are getting a good number of points for their effect, and that the Lancer's effect is much more powerful than any of the other Warrior dragon effects, it at a 101 just feels real low. This more than anything would justify going dragon Warrior.

    Rotface: I can see not liking the card, but it isn't that easy to deal 6 damage, and it's reliable to get at least a proc off if you plan around it.

    When do we get a Tarrot469 tier list? Would read.

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