Hearthstone

[Molach]

Won a close arena game against a paladin.

I had early pressure, zombie chow et al, but he stabilized at 8 hp, killed all my stuff.
I had some nice luck drawing what I needed...(but my deck had quite a bit of card draw, so I made a bit of that luck myself)

First I took 3 minions with a flamestrike.
But then he countered, got a big boulderfist ogre on board, I had no replies to that, then he filled up with sword of justice and cheap minions. I'm facing death.

I manage to buy a turn with blizzard + free molten giant and a gnomish engineer.

Next turn I can play ANCIENT MAGE and then ARCANE EXPLOSION - just about my two weakest cards in the draft, but ensured a board wipe of his frozen minions. Kill him just after, with 3 HPs to spare.


Artist's rendition of the two heroes facing off

[pindicator]

I am on my worst streak in arena, it's just so demoralizing to even play. My last runs have been 3, 4, 2, 4, 4, 3, and then I just drafted what should have been a really solid Warrior deck and only managed ONE win. The top-decking out there is just nasty.

[v8mark]

If it makes you feel any better, the average arena draft goes 2.5 wins. So even at your lowest point, you're still significantly out-performing the average arena player!

I had a solid shaman deck which went one win a couple of days ago as well. Sometimes you get the opponents you should have got in round 7 or 8 in round 1...!

[Ichabod]

If it makes you feel any better, the average arena draft goes 2.5 wins. So even at your lowest point, you're still significantly out-performing the average arena player!

I had a solid shaman deck which went one win a couple of days ago as well. Sometimes you get the opponents you should have got in round 7 or 8 in round 1...!

Either that or you get matched against a class that your deck will fare poorly.

I drafted a decent Pally deck recently, good early cards, two consecrates (no weapons, though). But I severely lacked powerful minions for the late game. I went 7-3, lost the 3 to mages, because it was simply impossible to beat them. You don't overcommit into flamestrike, they put a water elemental, you lose all your board to clear it, they answer with a big minion, you go all in, flamestrike. I think I would have gotten some 2/3 more wins if I got more shamans, for example.

My best moment in arena recently was after drafting a very, very good shaman deck. First game, went against a mage. I got a dominant board early on and he was reduced to very few cards. I played it very slow, to not get flamestriked (even though I had a lot of cards to play if that happened, I was mostly messing around). I used my weapon against one of his minions to preserve my board and was left with 20 hp. On his turn, he pyroblasted me. Seeing what was going to happen, I did all damage that I could, but he was left with 2 health. Next turn, another pyroblast and I lose.

My average arena runs recently have been a little bit under 7 wins, I think. My gold is stabilized between 750 - 1000, but that's with quests. I wanted to get more gold to open the Naxx cards, but it's not happening.

[Molach]

My arena average is around 5, value positive but gold slightly negative.
Gold income from quests more than cover this.

Sometimes i don't play for 3 days-then i make 3 quests for 150 or so plus 20-30 gold from normal match wins. And then I'm too tired to play arena so end up +200.
I got naxx from in- game gold, both with prime EU and my NA secondary deck. Now I just buy extra packs with gold, just keep 150 for an arena run ready.

[uberfish]

If it makes you feel any better, the average arena draft goes 2.5 wins. So even at your lowest point, you're still significantly out-performing the average arena player!

I had a solid shaman deck which went one win a couple of days ago as well. Sometimes you get the opponents you should have got in round 7 or 8 in round 1...!

Shouldn't the average be 3? Every time someone loses 3 games other players have to win 3, minus a little for people who retire their bad drafts and a few rare draws.

I average 6-7 arena wins since Naxx, although I feel I run into so many enemy decks with top tier legendaries too (deathwing, sylvanas, tirion, archmage, you name it)

[pindicator]

Yeah, I used to average 6-7 wins. It's been weeks since i've gotten that amount though That's the frustrating part, I know I'm better than how I'm performing.

I thought the overall average would have to be a little over 3, because of the decks that go 12 wins don't get 3 losses. Edit: Wait, that doesn't make sense...

[v8mark]

OK, I've done some investigating here to clarify - the median arena run goes 2.5 wins (exactly 50% are 2 or below, exactly 50% are 3 or higher)

The mean number of wins may well be higher or lower, or even the same - I'm not clever enough to figure it out off the top of my head. After some back of the envelope calculations in Excel the mean number of wins is apparently 3.02705, which I guess is 3 plus a small correction for the 12+ win runs that pindicator mentions, which distort the results slightly. Never mind - 2.99 according to my chart, which makes no sense to me. More investigation needed... someone who can math please enlighten me

There are some interesting charts showing cumulative win rates at the bottom of the Arena entry on gamepedia: http://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Arena

[uberfish]

maths:

If everyone lost 3 games in every arena session and there were no draws then the mean wins would also be 3, because for each loss someone else would get a win, therefore mean losses = mean wins. I'm not sure what exactly happens on a draw, but they're very rare so let's just ignore them for now.

Not everyone loses 3 games because people can either retire the deck before losing 3 games, or win 12 games (as Pind pointed out) before losing 3. Therefore, the mean number of wins should be a bit less than 3.

[uberfish]

(I've only ever had draws due to Hellfire)