It’s not necessarily the losing that’s frustrating, though it certainly can be if your opponent drops Tyrion or Prince Malchezaar when you didn’t get a Legendary – but if you’ve gone through your draft and realised that you’ve had say 4 or 5 choices where there was no good option, or you’ve screwed up, then you know you’re going to lose more often than not before you even get going… which is disheartening.

Don’t get me wrong – your guide is great (having read it properly now), and there’s a lot of stuff, like playing around secrets and minion placement for Meteor etc, that goes beyond the Arena as well – I just don’t think everyone (especially me) is really going to be an Arena player despite the theoretically greater rewards.

My preferred decks are where you put together ridiculous combos and try and pull them off; my favourite deck of all time is (now wild) Malygos Miracle Rogue… I’m just never going to enjoy Arena as much as constructed – but I might give it another shot next time I’ve got the gold to hand.

Hmmm – I’ve been playing for more than a year and a half and I’m terrible at Arena, seriously.

My 6 Arena runs have been:
3 losses x 2
2 wins x 3
3 wins x1

Every guide I’ve ever read, including this one, says that you’ll get better returns for your gold by playing arena but not if 1) you’re bad at Arena 2) are after cards from a specific set that isn’t the Arena pack reward and 3) much prefer playing with constructed decks – if you find Arena a chore then reward has to compensate you for putting up with it as well.

Maybe I’ll give this guide a more thorough read-through and venture back into Arena at some point but I can’t realistically see me ever becoming good at it; I find it frustrating and generally want to quit before I’ve even gotten through the card selection (now which of these three cards is the least terrible… hmmm?) 😐

Last time I used him was in a Priest deck when I was badly behind on board presence (vs Jade Druid IIRC) – first thing he did was cast purify on himself 😐

Lifesteal… “Interestingly, it is the first time the effect has been put on a spell…” – Holy Fire came pretty close; granted the healing doesn’t scale with SDI – but otherwise…

True – but to have used Deathstalker Rexxar you’re already at least 6 turns in – by which time you could well be running low on cards to play because Hunter (generally) doesn’t have the best ability to draw cards.

It’s quite possible you’d be at the end of a turn with 2 mana left over and not much to do with it. At that point in time you would be looking to create a decent Zombeast to play next turn.

I can see some use in meme or “just for fun” casual decks – but unless the meta radically changes to one that’s far more control focused I suspect Hunter, on the ladder, will remain aggressive or mid-range and stick with the regular hero power to chip away at the opponent’s health each turn… but I’m not a Legendary ladder-climber so I might easily be way off.

Could be fun in Wild though – as that’s tended to have a slower meta than standard.

Not more than 5 mana hmmm… that keeps my Bittertide Hydra + Angry Chicken dream alive still! 😀

Even if it doesn’t kill anything… Spirit Lash > Northshire Cleric > Circle of Healing; it’s a 3 card combo but for 3 mana, against something like token Druid, you’re going to get a reasonable amount of health and a lot of card draw.

Could work quite well in Quest Hunter since you’ve got a bazillion 1 cost cards in the deck; 2 health instead of 1 makes a big difference early on – it puts your Fiery Bats (for instance) out of the immediate range of Mage, Druid and Rogue hero powers and spells like Maelstrom Portal.

However, you’d have to hope to draw it early and since it’s a Legendary there’s only 1 in the pack… It could be useful after you’ve dropped Carnassa to buff all of her brood but I think that’ll probably have less impact at that stage in the game.

Hmmmm Build-a-Beast Workshop…

Stubborn Gastropod + Carrion Grub = 5 mana 3/7 with Taunt and Poisonous?
… or with Oasis Snapjaw for a 6 mana 3/9 with Taunt and Poisonous?

Bittertide Hydra + Angry Chicken = 6 mana 9/9 with Enrage +5 attack… but take 3 damage whenever it’s wounded.

Timber Wolf + Tundra Rhino = 6 mana 3/6 all beasts gain charge and +1 attack.

Vicious Fledgeling + Young Dragonhawk = 4 mana 4/4 with windfury that adapts every time you attack with it.

Vicious Fledgeling + Stonetusk Boar = 4 mana 4/4 with charge that adapts every time you attack with it (charge guarantees one adaptation)

… though I quite fancy, in Wild:

Gahz’rilla + Jungle Panther – it probably wouldn’t be very good as it’d cost 10 mana _but_ … 10 mana 10/11 with stealth that doubles its attack whenever wounded 🙂

I went down the route of using Paladin (since I had some quests to clear out) and flooding the board with tiny minions (Lost in the Jungle, Muster for Battle, Leper Gnome, Dragon Egg and so on) to buff mini-Rag as much as possible and let him kill the opponent; not hugely effective (until I added Grim Patron) but having a 20 attack mini-Rag on the board was worth it. Chalked off the Fireworks emote quest pretty quickly.

Like most of my decks seem to be – fun, but not terribly effective 🙂

The deck I tend to use has no back-up plan though 😀 It’s Mill or Die – I will accept no other outcome*!

… which is probably why I don’t get a great win-rate 😉

* (not entirely true)

In an ideal game you can almost ignore what your opponent does entirely; just ensure you don’t leave cards you want to bounce on the board at the end of the turn. If you can Prep into Crystal Core on turn 4 or 5 you’ve basically won, your life total doesn’t mean much when you’ve got 25 potential face damage on the board on turn 5 or 6… unless you’ve got a properly aggressive opponent (in which case you’re quite likely all-but-dead).

Quest Rogue is more *proactive* (aggressive).

With a “classic” (Miracle) Rogue Combo deck you normally spend the early game restricting your opponent’s board presence until you can line up your big OTK. It might take a while and you’ll probably churn through most of your deck but in an ideal game you’ll counter your opponents moves as best you can before snatching victory.

It’s a much more *reactive* (defensive) deck.
(much more the kind of deck I prefer to play)

So yes, you can get the big swings with Quest Rogue but that’s not _really_ what the deck is about – it’s just what you have to do when you can’t flood the board with 5/5s by turn 6.

Caverns Below was actually one of the 2 Legendaries I got in the initial 50-pack purchase with the release of Un’goro; I was able to get a Quest Rogue deck up and running right off the bat… and I never enjoyed playing it. It’s heavily reliant on the draw and decisions you make very early on; get it right (especially if you can Prep into the Crystal Core on about turn 4 or 5) and you basically cannot lose… get it wrong and you almost cannot win (except in favoured match ups). You can often tell whether you’ve won or lost in 4 or 5 turns.

The thing that makes Combo decks fun, for me, is the big swing – the point where everything you’ve built the deck around all comes together and you get that Woohoo! moment. You’ve churned through your deck with a Gadgetzan Auctioneer, dropped Emperor Thaurissan on the board and you’re ready, next turn, for the OTK Malygos drop! (yes, Wild Malygos Miracle Rogue is still probably my favourite deck)

The Rogue Quest really doesn’t do that – it’s one card which you’re guaranteed to start with, a dozen cards to tick the boxes and “me go face”. I find it almost as horrible to pilot as Pirate Warrior … and I really don’t enjoy playing with aggro decks.

Mind – once it’s nerfed I might actually revisit the Rogue Quest… I like to set myself stupid challenges 🙂

I still play Mill Rogue quite a bit in Wild … don’t get a great win rate but trolling Freeze Mages and Buff Priests (wait until they’ve played Divine Spirit, then Sap it) is totally worth it.

As soon as a Druid drops a Jade Idol though, you may as well concede – the deck is totally un-millable.

I’m pretty sure that means in a single pack – “This means you won’t open three or more of the same Common, Rare, or Epic anymore.”; I’d be amazed if it actually changed the open rates of rare/epic/legendary cards. So if you’ve already got all the commons, you’ll just get duplicate commons – just not three or more of the same one in a single pack.

“No duplicates” only counts for legendaries so, no, you’ll probably just get 4 commons and a rare – and since you’ve already completed the set that’s just 40 dust.

Soooo … in the UK that means the pack price is about the same as what it was before they increased the prices. Can’t say I’m hugely excited by that.

Rogue is historically the class that probably most messes around with tempo; a lot of Rogue archetypes sacrifice early tempo for big combo swings. Not so much in Standard now (bar the Vilespine Slayer) but you still have to watch out in Wild.

Malygos Miracle Rogue was probably the ultimate case in point; they look like they’re just hanging on for most of the game but as soon as Emperor Thaurissan hits the board you know you’re probably dead next turn unless you’ve got more than 25 health (but even that’s not guaranteed to save you).

Conceal is more useful with the Questing Adventurers and Auctioneers … this is a pretty old skool deck, there’s only about half-a-dozen cards different to how it was when League of Explorers was released.

It’ll get off to a slow start, begin to stabilise when you can drop Tomb Pillager and then snowball horrendously with the QAs and Auctioneers … the problem is living long enough for that to happen; aggro has never been an easy match up for Miracle Rogue.

This is a Wild deck though – different meta. You could run into a Dr. Boom Mech Mage one game and a Quest Warrior the next… or, more likely, Pirate Warrior with Ship’s Cannons.