Introduction

The Best Draft Ever

Learning From Defeat

How Much Gold Do You Earn?

Greetings, I’m Sheng, a Legend rank constructed and 7.5 win-average arena player. I runwhere our coaches have helped many students achieve the same.It was a Friday night, and I was walking back to my dorm. Tiffany, that cute brunette girl in my general education class that I thought was giving me all the right signals, just turned me down for a date. It didn't help that when I went to approach her, I accidentally spilled coffee all over my pants, ending any possibility of a normal conversation. After a brisk walk, and a shower of shame, I decide to take my mind off things with a little Hearthstone. Whoa! My night improves alot after I'm offered a draft full of Rares, Epics, and Legendaries. Tonight is the night. It's the night I finally get that sweet 12 win icon.Thoughts of a Lightforge key flash before my eyes. My incredibly drafted deck steamrolls its first 5 opponents. I feel invincible. After a quick bathroom break, I go back for another game. Another 7 wins in a row doesn't seem out of reach. Not with this deck. Unfortunately, life doesn't always go as planned, and my next three opponents seemingly topdeck into every answer, ending my run at 5-3. This was the deck. Why couldn't I go further?Did I really draft the best deck ever, or did that sylvanas windrunner and ragnaros the firelord mask the deficiencies I had in the rest of my deck? Did my opponents really topdeck every answer, or did they wisely hold on to their board clear until it could do the maximum amount of damage? While I was short-sighted, I was fortunate enough to keep records of my draft and my games to analyze, and quickly realized that my deck lost all 3 games because none of the awesome cards I drafted ever got into play. I ignored my early game, focusing purely on card value, and drafted an entire deck filled with late game win conditions. Unfortunately, all three of my opponents, a Warlock, a Hunter, and a Rogue were able to dispatch me before I got to late game. It didn't help that the Rogue ended my run constantly spamming Sorry. The pleasure is mine. Well, the pleasure certainly wasn't mine.Greetings, I'm Sheng, a Legend rank constructed and infinite arena player. I runwhere we're dedicated to helping players improve to achieve their Hearthstone goals. This is the start of a series on the topic of advanced arena. It's for good players who've hit a plateau in their game, and want to overcome the hump from 4 to 7 wins. Aside from achieving 12 wins in a single run, the dream of most arena players is to be able to earn enough gold from each run to play indefinitely. So why is 7 wins so important? Well it's the threshhold you'll need to hit to be able to play arena indefinitely off your winnings. It's also what is known to many advanced players as going. Alright, enough with the lame anecdotes. This is a guide about advanced arena right? Show me the money!

Average Gold Per Win from ArenaMastery.com

On average, there's a 57% increase in the amount of gold you'll get jumping from 6 wins to 7. Statistically, this is the most significant increase in gold from one win to another in arena. Being able to hit this threshhold consistently is one of the most difficult things to do. How rare is this phenomenon, and how do you get there?

Where Do You Stand?

A few months ago, Reddit user mlibbrecht calculated the probability of a player being able to hit 12 wins. From his data , I mapped out the expected number of wins for a player at differing skill levels.

25th Percentile: 1.4 Wins

50th Percentile: 2.6 Wins

75th Percentile: 4.3 Wins

90th Percentile: 5.9 Wins

99.9th Percentile: 7.4 Wins

For reference, Trump averages about 7.7 wins per run in arena , putting him well within the top 0.1% of all arena players, with 12 wins as his most common result. If you want to learn from someone, I'd highly recommend watching his stream or following fellow writer ADWCTA whose results are in the same ballpark.

My Personal Record

Keeping track of my arena stats from day one was probably the smartest thing I ever did in Hearthstone. By mapping my progression over time, I was able to see my strengths and weaknesses, which has helped me become a better player. While my book-keeping was simple in the beginning, nowadays, I track my entire draft from start to finish and record my match records.

I started playing Hearthstone towards the end of season 1. With a very casual background in drafting from another card game called Magic the Gathering (playing with a few friends after work over beers once every few months), I started off slightly higher than the 75th percentile of all players. For most, this would be considered pretty good, but as my goal was to become an infinite player, this wasn't nearly good enough.

By the end of my second season, having familiarized myself with most of the cards in the game, my rating jumped to around the 90th percentile of all players. Unfortunately, my average gold didn't increase that much, even having improved my game. It goes to show how large the gap between 6 and 7 wins is in terms of gold.

To Infinity And Beyond! By June, I had barely become an "infinite" player, earning exactly 150 gold per run. Since then, my numbers have steadily increased, but let's focus on my progression during the first two months. How did I go from a good player to an infinite one? For those of you who haven't reached the 5 win average threshold, I'd highly recommend you read my Beginner's Arena series. Using these as reference, you should be able to get there. Beginner’s Arena Guide: Choosing a Class and Drafting a Deck Beginner’s Arena Guide: Winning Games Beginner’s Arena Guide: The Importance of Board Clear My start to becoming an infinite player started after my first 12 win run with my friend Achieving The Dream It was a Saturday night, and we both had one too many beers. Brian had just started playing Hearthstone, and never did an arena. Being the more experienced player, he wanted me to show him the ropes. We went through a Rogue draft together, carefully consulting a tier list, and argued over picks that were maybes. It was 2 AM, and having drafted something we both deemed reasonable, we called it a night, and agreed to go back to it in the morning when he woke up. The deck we drafted didn't look very overpowered. It had a decent mana curve, and some cute removal spells, but none of those Epic or Legendary cards you see when people post their decks on Reddit. I had fairly low expectations, and said we'd probably get 5 wins. Improbably, this deck went on to win 12, on Brian's free arena ticket. Analyzing Brian's Deck While I don't remember exactly what we argued over, there were many instances during our draft together where we disagreed over which card to choose. Often this discussion forced us to look over the rest of our deck to consider if there was any synergy we'd missed by choosing one card over the other. Thus, cards like Two Brians Better Than One? Because only one of us could control the mouse at a time (thankfully the suggestion of connecting two USB mice into his laptop never came across our heads), we had to discuss out loud what the play was going to be on each turn. This forced us to count each and every individual mana crystal. Having a second person double check simple math turned out to be surprisingly helpful, as there were times where I would forget to include our hero power, which at one point gave us lethal. Perhaps the best call of the entire run was when we were at 12 health on game 10 against a Druid. I proposed to Brian that we should use our What Did I Learn? So what exactly did I learn from that run, that kick-started my progression to becoming an infinite arena player? Well, I realized several things: 1. I didn't plan out my entire turn ahead of time. Often I'd make the first play that comes to mind. Because I'm a more conservative player, this generally means finding some way of clearing the board with my minions, causing me to miss lethal. 2.I didn't consider the answers my opponent had for my plays. Being obsessed with spending every last mana crystal, I'd often play into board clears that would blow away any advantage I'd earn in early game. This was especially painful against Mages. 3. I didn't take into account card synergy after drafting half of my cards. By June, I had barely become an "infinite" player, earning exactly 150 gold per run. Since then, my numbers have steadily increased, but let's focus on my progression during the first two months.For those of you who haven't reached the 5 win average threshold, I'd highly recommend you read my Beginner's Arena series. Using these as reference, you should be able to get there.My start to becoming an infinite player started after my first 12 win run with my friend Brian . This was back when I was a 5 win player, having just finished my first full season of Hearthstone.It was a Saturday night, and we both had one too many beers. Brian had just started playing Hearthstone, and never did an arena. Being the more experienced player, he wanted me to show him the ropes. We went through a Rogue draft together, carefully consulting a tier list, and argued over picks that were maybes. It was 2 AM, and having drafted something we both deemed reasonable, we called it a night, and agreed to go back to it in the morning when he woke up. The deck we drafted didn't look very overpowered. It had a decent mana curve, and some cute removal spells, but none of those Epic or Legendary cards you see when people post their decks on Reddit. I had fairly low expectations, and said we'd probably get 5 wins. Improbably, this deck went on to win 12, on Brian's free arena ticket.While I don't remember exactly what we argued over, there were many instances during our draft together where we disagreed over which card to choose. Often this discussion forced us to look over the rest of our deck to consider if there was any synergy we'd missed by choosing one card over the other. Thus, cards like sprint made the cut after we realized that our deck was early to mid-game focused and lacked sufficient card draw.Because only one of us could control the mouse at a time (thankfully the suggestion of connecting two USB mice into his laptop never came across our heads), we had to discuss out loud what the play was going to be on each turn. This forced us to count each and every individual mana crystal. Having a second person double check simple math turned out to be surprisingly helpful, as there were times where I would forget to include our hero power, which at one point gave us lethal. Perhaps the best call of the entire run was when we were at 12 health on game 10 against a Druid. I proposed to Brian that we should use our assassins blade to clear a minion, bringing us down to 8 health. He was worried that it'd bring our life total down to lethal range, so I reconsidered, played a taunt and attacked the Druid's face instead. Right after that turn, our opponent swipe d twice on our hero for 8, and then conceded the game. Thankfully we weren't two clones of each other, because being forced to question each other at all times turned both of us from decent players into an arena wrecking crew. For those who are interested, here's our loot from the run. To make things sweeter, this was around the time that unleash the hounds was nerfed :)So what exactly did I learn from that run, that kick-started my progression to becoming an infinite arena player? Well, I realized several things: 1. I didn't plan out my entire turn ahead of time.2.I didn't consider the answers my opponent had for my plays.3. I didn't take into account card synergy after drafting half of my cards.