How Not to be a Bad Hearthstone Player

*This intro was written after the article was finished.* When I started writing this article I aimed at something very different from what it ended up becoming. I was actually writing an article about tournament and ladder mindset, and ended up making a guide on how not being a bad Hearthstone player instead. I readed […]

Introduction

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*This intro was written after the article was finished.*

When I started writing this article I aimed at something very different from what it ended up becoming.

I was actually writing an article about tournament and ladder mindset, and ended up making a guide on how not being a bad Hearthstone player instead.

I readed the article a couple of times, and I actually enjoyed how it turned out to be, so despite the minor editing to fit the subject more, I decided to keep the parts where I was still trying to develop the initial subject and ended up changing it, because not only the read looks a lot more fun like that, it also helps you following my line of thinking.

Despite the big change in subject, the article ended up being a very fun one, and I hope you enjoy it!

As a heads up, I would like to express that this article is completely directed to Hearthstone newcomers and people who aren’t competitive in general.

Enjoy the read!

Getting Rid of the Beginner’s Mindset

When I started thinking about beginner’s Mindset, I ended up noticing how close it is to the perverted concept of “Having fun” people have and decided to work on it as a whole.

Something that I have been noticing is how much people’s nature in finding excuses for failures and rejections is present in new Hearthstone players. The whole nature itself exists in everything we do, and in Hearthstone it is often mistaken with the perverted concept of “Having fun”, which greatly slows peoples improvement throughout their gaming experience.

We get to the first concept I wanted to discuss: Having fun vs. Winning games.

A lot of players lie to themselves, saying they are playing a game to have fun instead of playing to actually win. That mindset is weak and the first thing you have to abandon in order to progress in Hearthstone, to progress in actually anything you want to do in your entire life. Success is always the objective. Sure you can increase your enjoyment of the game by winning with different types of strategies that you enjoy playing with more, but in the end if you are not winning, you are not having fun.

You have to remember you are actually playing a game – committing your time to that one competition you chose to take part of – you want to win otherwise you wouldn’t even be there, so get the mindset of “just having fun” out of the game and start trying to win – Trying is the first step to reaching your goal.

Getting rid of the Independent’s Mindset

Now that the “losing mindset” is excluded from your head you are actually trying to win games. But you aren’t going to win by not learning from other players – The second mindset that needs to be excluded from your thoughts is the one regarding Deck Choice.

A lot of people like to glorify “being able to make its own deck”, but they don’t understand that the concept of doing so is connected to completely understanding how the game, the metagame, consistency, curving, and a lot of other aspects of the game work.

You are not going to build your own deck if you are not good enough for it, if you just started playing some time ago even less, and that is, surprisingly, where people try to build their own decks the most.

So here comes my first tip to people who aren’t familiar with the high-end of the game’s Ladder and tournament scene: Copy someone else’s decks.

Usually, whenever you see someone posting a list and claiming to have reached high Legend with it or something like that, that list usually has a lot of hours, sometimes even days, of improvement and building, that list wasn’t simply built at random and thrown into the ladder – The guy actually took a lot of time making it, learning how it was built. His deck is the product of hours of thinking, analysis, not only his own, but from a lot of other players that he talked with, played with, interacted with.

You are not going to outsmart the result of thousands of other player’s experiences and developments all by yourself. Even Kolento’s, Thijs’ and Loyan’s decks are the result of a massive flow of information they gathered from countless hours of gameplay and constant updating and self-improvement.

You don’t build your own house if you don’t know how to, you don’t build your own car if you don’t know how to, so why are you going to build your own deck? To have fun? If you think so, then go back and re-read the last section.

Those guys that actually made their successful decks did them to win, not to have fun.

Closing

Getting rid of these mindsets will greatly improve your gaming performance in Hearthstone. Obviously, there is a lot you have to learn in order to actually become a good Hearthstone player, but in general I think that you first need to learn how not to be bad so you can start becoming good, and that is why I thought that this subject was needed to be brought up.

Hope you guys enjoyed the read, it ended up being something a lot different from what I started, I even had some huge data analysis that I might be using on future articles.

Love you guys, see you all around,

Nuba


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