This Week in Heartstone Week 52

This Week in Hearthstone: summing up week 52 of 2015

Hello fellow Hearthstone players. Welcome to the second article I write every week to give players my insights and play I saw during week 52 of Hearthstone. I do find it a challenge to get the articles written and maintain game play for the writing content. Time is valuable to all of us and while only playing 2 hours a day sometimes can be difficult. I end up spending more time writing than playing. I look forward to writing both articles and I hope you enjoy reading them as I put my best effort to give you information of my weekly exploits. It has been a good year in Hearthstone and I hope they continue to give us new content and maybe even something never seen before. I enjoyed the cooperative play Tavern Brawl and I hope the find a way to bring it back. I do not see a way to do it for standard play but who knows maybe they can come up with something and make it a permanent fixture in Hearthstone.

Maximizing Time

One of the key aspects is to inform and give my opinion on best use of time this week based on the Meta I experienced. I have a rough time maximizing my time due to lack of wins for my games played this week. I seemed to be either winning big, need one card for a win or just getting owned which occurred the most. So how do we maximize are time based on these numbers you may ask? This week maybe difficult based on the decks I saw that were not standard meta decks believe it not. The legend cards I saw a lot of was elise starseeker, brann bronzebeard , and I was surprised to not see mind control tech based on the current meta. You expect to see certain cards but maybe they never drew them also. You have to keep not everyone draws what they need. Therefore knowing what your opponents have can be difficult unless you’re playing ranked games then you may know.

Almost all agro decks had 4 or more minions in a turn. I think we will see more mind control tech going forward if the Meta continues to have a lot of minions on the board. I did see more Legendary cards than I am used to seeing but that could be attributed to games lasting than usual as a lot of games normally end by turn seven. Since I was struggling with wins in all formats I decided to go through my decks and make changes. I was maintaining a fifty percent plus win rate but it was more of lose three win three type scenario. I did finish with ranked wins for all my heroes; I ended up with only earning 5 free packs for the week. The issue was in the quests I received for the week. I did get any spectator quests which are nice to get especially twice a week and I would have made my number of seven packs. The quests I did see were win 5 with a Druid or Paladin, win 5 with a Paladin or a Druid, win 3 games with any class, win three with a Druid, win 3 with a Warlock, and win 3 with a Hunter.

Opening Pack Results

The cards I opened were ok for the week I managed to net at least 40 dusts out of every pack. Gold card highlights included cobra shot , divine favor , argent watchman , lay on hands , argent commander and the rest got grinded down to dust. I am satisfied on 5 packs but my goal is seven every week. The other issue was the ranked wins since I do not play casual unless making a completely off the wall new deck. I struggled to keep above 50 percent win rate. One pack did net 135 dust but that was the highest for the week.

Game Play

This week I focused my play with the following heroes: Paladin, Druid, Warlock, and Hunter. My decisions were based mainly on quest selection and striving toward the gold hero. I started off with my murloc Paladin which focuses of course around anyfin can happen . I have not had any troubles drawing it but you do have to let as many Murloc’s dies as possible. The card reads for 10 summon 7 Murloc’s that died this game. The nice part is if your opponent uses them to. I do run into problems of the cards summoned so during game play my first choice is the charge ones, then the buff ones and finally the inspire ones. If done properly and lucky I have had 40 damage on the table in one turn. Most times the damage is the 20 plus range. The majority of opponents I faced were Paladins, Mage’s, and Hunter’s in the rank 20 to rank 18 levels. I did finish the week at rank 14 and that is usually where I end up at the end of the month playing only two hours a day. The time required to Legend is basically unattainable for me playing only two hours a day. The matches this week seemed to take forever. I started timing my games and they averaged long time consumption. I didn’t not have any concedes on my part or my opponents part unless lethal damage was certain. I think one reason is players are becoming better and the game has been out long enough to learn more quickly and improvement in websites like Hearthstone players dot com. The knowledge base, player caliber, informative articles and deck lists make it easier than ever to rack up the wins. The majority of my games literally came down to top decked the final lethal card. I did find times of frustration in my decks needing one card to finish my opponent off. I resisted the urge this to change my decks rather I decided to focus on my game play. That means I shouldn’t be waiting on one card but already finish my opponent before getting to that point. A good thing about ranked play this week the quality of opponents faced even at the rank twenty range were very good players.. That could be attributed to the beginning of the month of course. I am thinking now that even playing at the end of the month caliber of quality of opponents has increased due to more players waiting until the end of the month to play. I do not wait. I play ranked from the beginning throughout the end. This mentality has improved my game play all around and I encourage players to not wait till the end because it’s not the same as it used to be in my opinion.

Deck List

The primary deck list this week I used is going to be the Paladin. I ended up with more ranked wins this hero than any other hero. The deck is based on Murloc’s with some healing also. We have many choices of Murloc’s to choose from and you could craft a deck of Murloc’s and spells only if you wanted. I did try an all Murloc minion deck with spells. I found it acceptable but by no means overrunning the table. I stayed with a mix as you will see in my deck list. The list shown is the final version that I played the rest of the week with.

Parting Thoughts

I am not sure about the rest of you Hearthstone players but I am looking forward to this upcoming year in Hearthstone. I hope the game developers at least repeat this past year’s new game content and maybe come up with something completely new. The past week had many highs and lows but mainly lows in the frustration I had trying to win ranked games. The current Meta is tough for all players and the randomness of decks being used makes it even more complicated when trying to maintain a win rate.