Hello everyone! With the Arena Season update, I’ve invested several days exploring the current environment in depth. In this article, I’ll begin with a brief overview of the changes to the environment, followed by sharing my personal insights into the card selection strategies of a few strong professions.
[Brief analysis of environmental changes]
The current arena environment has changed due to the withdrawal of Dueling Barren Lands, with the departure of Dredge and Cosmic systems with it, leading to an overall decrease in the late-game ceiling of the profession. At the same time, the decrease in neutral rep decks is also a notable change, especially with the exit of Sunspot Gargoyle, which has made high-quality neutral rep creatures scarce, with only a few decks such as Cleanup Bot, Eldrazi Brute Soldier, Arcanist Protective Crystal, and Sunwatcher remaining at the moment. As a result, neutral rep sources have become especially valuable.
The addition of Titan Gods and Dragonfall has brought an increase in 1-cost quality creatures to the environment, such as 112 Vikuans, 122 Searing Light Battlemage, and 112 Unmanned Disassembler. This has definitely sped up the pace of the game and lowered the overall margin for error, making the gap between successive hands more pronounced.
In addition, the Resort Adventures and Music Festival expansion packs, which are still in the rotation pool, contain a large number of neutral, quality discovery and spin-off cards such as Scenic Chargers, Bloodsail Conscripts, Paparazzi, and Ghostwriters, greatly enriching players’ means of replenishing their resources. For professions such as Mage, resource cards can even reach 10 or more, continuously providing support for the offense, and even fast attacking decks can continue to apply pressure from 1 to 10 costs, and are less likely to get into trouble due to running out of cards in their hand.
Such a change is unfavorable for pure control decks. On the one hand, due to the withdrawal of core cards from the environment, the control deck’s resources for solving problems have become scarce, and may not be able to effectively control the field in the face of the opponent’s strong field; on the other hand, in the face of the continuous offensive pressure coupled with the lack of means of recovery, it may be defeated under the constant consumption of fast attackers.
Pure control decks rely on depleting their opponent’s resources to win, but in this environment, relying purely on this strategy becomes even more difficult, and terminals such as Hyper Expand (Nebula) are even more necessary to win.
With the accelerated tempo and reduced fault tolerance, the current version of the arena pays more attention to the early rhythm of the fight. Whoever can stabilize the field and master the tempo in the early stage will be able to gradually accumulate advantages in the next exchange of the field, and eventually form a winning trend. Therefore, the current version of the rhythm of the fight from the 1 fee, 1 fee can stand on the field has become more important, 1 fee card curve is more important than ever, 1 fee card win rate has also reached an unprecedented high point.
Taking the current version of the dominant – Mage’s high win rate cards as an example, Searing Light Battlemage and Viktor of Victory, cards that might have been worth only 3.5 or 4 points before, are now on par with 5+ high score cards such as Prison Landmark and Quest for Creation in today’s environment. This shows the extreme importance of 1-drop creatures in the current version. Since there are no particularly overmodeled 2- and 3-cost followers in the environment, 2- and 3-cost followers don’t have a prominent tempo advantage in the current environment and can’t effectively make up for the tempo loss caused by 1-cost creatures, so once the field falls behind, the snowball effect will expand rapidly.
Therefore, in the current version, it is necessary to abandon the past mindset of blindly choosing resource cards when you see them. When selecting cards, it is important to pay more attention to the selection of quality 1-cost creatures. While resource cards are also important, quality 1-drop creatures are especially scarce, and they are vital to controlling tempo.
[Occupational analysis]
As of today, the win rate of each profession is shown in the following chart, as can be seen from the data, the profession is obviously divided into two echelons, the win rate gap is significant, followed by a brief analysis of the current strong profession and some of the midstream profession.
Mage is the current environment of the dominant, the reason is that it can have low-cost to deal with the ability and means of early attack, which is an important reason it pulls away from the other professions, the silver bottle sea rhyme adjustment in the arena is a real strengthening, the single card itself is very flexible, a silver bottle sea rhyme can withstand down the early fast-attack offensive, the fire seal fire demon is also still in the environment, it exists with the silver bottle sea rhyme to make the opponent become extremely difficult to stand in the early stage. The opposite side of the field in the early stage has become extremely difficult, in addition to the mage there is a scarce environment of hard cards reverberation, decay missile, the mage in the face of DK also have more power to fight, AOE also has a wave of iteration, the power of the stars of the quality of aoe cards. It can be said that the mage in the ability to solve the field end is pull full, the mage itself is the fast attack sanctioner.
As for the offensive end, with the addition of a large number of elemental cards, the addition of Running Archivist, and Corrupted Remnants, the pre-mage tempo of the mage is also very good, allowing the mage to play offense as well, and the pre-mage tempo of the mage is very strong. It can be said that now the mage in the early stage can both play offense, but also can clean up the opposite side of the field, which makes the mage in the early stage will be very easy to stand on the field advantage, which is any other profession does not have the ability.
What about the later stages? Late stage mage extremely powerful derivation ability believe you have heard of it, to know, tidal land, super nova, peak infinite are still in the environment, there is also a very high cap of the void scripture, mage to worry about is not at all not finish the cards, but the cards do not play out. This is partly due to the mid-late mage’s ability to stand is something missing, hold is banned, the strength of the elemental awakening and tsunami talk about very high quality, so that the mage in the mid-late stage may fall into a hand of solving the situation and discovery, and there is no thing under the awkward scene, the situation of the mage civil war is to throw each other direct injury to rub blood, after all, your field is easy to be cleaned up.
This is partly due to the fact that the ability to stand in the mid-late game of the mage is somewhat lacking, the hold is banned, the strength of Elemental Wake and Tsunami is not talked about very high quality, making the mage in the mid-late game may be in the situation of a hand of solves and discovery, and there is no thing under the awkward field, the situation of the mage civil war is to throw each other straight wounds to scuffle the blood, after all, your field can be easily cleaned up.
So mages still need straight wounds to kill people, and it’s good to know that there are still good straight wounds like Rune of Molten Fire. But the mage itself is also easy to be killed by the opposite side of the straight wound, after all, the mage in the current environment is no means of professional recovery, the mage’s blood is hit a little bit less, the mage still has a very obvious flaw. But even so, the mage is still in the current environment of the hegemony, deservedly the arena a sister.
In the current environment, the last version of the arena’s dominant player has dropped to second place in terms of win rate, and this has a lot to do with Dark Undead’s retreat from the environment, with fewer Undead matchups and a greater reliance on Journey Security. This also has a lot to do with the fact that DK has a big shortcoming in terms of solving the field, it may be great at creating a field, but its ability to solve the field is very scarce. DK’s AoE is a hardcore believer, and its solos are hard to find, so it’s easy to get snowballed by fast attackers, and DK still has the advantage of being able to get back to the game. The key cards such as Airlock Breaker and Skeleton Hound can provide DK with a means of recovery that other professions can’t match, and DK has a higher margin of error compared to other professions.
And on the offensive side of things, DK also has extremely high quality straight damage cards like Earth’s End, Ice Cream. As long as a deck has these two cards in it, DK’s straight damage is guaranteed, and DK’s One Ice runes are often times in for them.
However, the core idea of Rainbow DK relies more on reanimated Undead cards like Dread Hound Trainer and Cool Ghoul, using them to lynch and steal blood. In the later stages, they beat their opponents with burst damage from Landmark and Ice Cream. This strategy fits the current environment very well, and can be said to be tried and true. Especially nowadays, Mages lack the means to recover, and are very afraid of Ice Cream and other direct damage decks. In this way, DK can maintain strong sustained pressure in the battle, while gradually winning in the mid to late game when Mages and other professions are unable to stand up.
While the two green and one red DK is more rely on the withering assimilation of this supermodel single card as well as the death match, it is more reliant on the death match compared to the rainbow DK, playing or spreading the death hiss spreading the security death, yodeling berserk singer triggered many times the security death of the set. Strength is weakened compared to the previous version, but it’s still very strong. After all, there is still no Morph and Silence in the neutral decks, but in fact, the environment of the mage can find a lot of Echoing Reverberation and Degenerate Missile to be sanctioned by its powerful derivation ability.
Other colors of DK due to the lack of corresponding runes very strong card is not very recommended, such as two red, two blue basically nothing particularly powerful card, not worth in order to such as the soul retrieval death metal knight such cards and directly into the two green or two red, mainstream DK rune ideas or rainbow or two green and one red. This version of the DK and in fact the last version of the strength is almost the same, strong dead language system compared to the last version of the weakened but still very strong (trip security, death hiss, Yoder roar singer, stage) are still in the environment, and the last version of the problem such as the lack of cards, the ability to solve the field of weak in this version is still not solved, which also led to DK is no longer the dominant arena, and under the mage.
The withdrawal of Duel in the Barren Lands has taken away tumbleweed and 9416, as well as Shaman’s proud treasure-digging and cosmic systems, which is a huge blow to Shaman, whose mid-to-late game strength has been weakened a lot. As a result, Shaman is now much more reliant on Nebula in the late game, and whether or not you have Nebula can make all the difference in a Shaman deck’s playstyle and overall strength.
In terms of offense, Shaman actually relies more on neutral quality followers, and doesn’t have a very strong offensive card in its own profession. While Shaman has offensive and defensive tempo cards like Backstage Bodyguard and Improvisation, as well as quality tempo cards like Mixed Totemist, Jukebox, and Trend Reversal, the quantity and quality of these cards are slightly inferior to Hunter and DK.
On the defensive end, Shaman still has a decent amount of AOEs, such as Drinking Magma, Thunder Crash, and Meteor Storm. However, the latter two are of relatively average quality, nowhere near as premium as Tumbleweed. In terms of replies, Shaman also has a number of reply cards, such as Chilling Chime, Chord of Change, and Frost Pendulum, as well as the quality defense card Ablative Elemental. These give the Shaman a significant advantage over the Mage in terms of recovery.
With an abundance of AOE, quality taunt attachments, and enough means of returning blood, Shaman does have some defensive capabilities against fast attacks. However, the awkward thing about Shaman is that it can hold the field but may not win the game. After all, fast attacks nowadays can also provide enough quality in the late game through discovery and derived resources that Shaman may not be able to handle. The disabling of Gathering Spectators and Dazzling Performer, as well as the mediocrity of the asteroid system, has made Shaman rely heavily on Nebula late game, going the fast-attack blood rush route. However, due to the Magma nerf, Shaman’s ability to grab blood has also decreased, and with its limited number and quality of tempo cards, Shaman doesn’t have a significant advantage over other professions if it goes fast. Shamans with Nebula can still beat their opponents by stalling and waiting for Nebula’s outburst, but Nebula isn’t something that every Shaman will have, and that’s what makes it awkward for Shamans in the arena environment at the moment. The good thing is, Shamans can still spin off Nebula or gather an audience through discovery and other means.
In a fast attack environment, Hunter is undoubtedly one of the most compatible professions. In terms of standing, Hunter has quality followers such as Shivering Earth Awakening, Musician, Mythic Observer, Biplane Dragon and Old Horse, and these cards help Hunter maintain a strong tempo. The quantity and quality of Hunter’s tempo cards are quite good, allowing them to effectively control the field.
In terms of resources, Hunter also has ample means of replenishment. For example, cards such as Notes, Bananas, and Bucket of Cheer can indirectly replenish resources, making Hunter no slouch when it comes to resource acquisition.
In terms of direct damage, Hunter is also not to be underestimated. In addition to Jungle Snapper and Raptor Rage, there is also the Hunter’s proudest professional specialty, archery, and therefore, I believe that the Hunter is one of the professions that best fits the current fast-attack environment.
However, why can’t the Hunter reach the top, but can only come in fourth? I personally believe that Hunters have a certain disadvantage when facing Mages. Cards like Old Horse and Tremendous Awakening can only be resolved in front of a Mage. This makes it difficult for Hunters to grab enough blood in the early game, and in the late game, it’s difficult to beat Mages just by shooting arrows. In the end, Hunter usually can’t break through the Mage’s defenses in the late game. As a result, although Hunters are very adaptable in a fast attack environment, they are often at a disadvantage against Mages.
However, I still highly recommend that newbies try out Hunter, which is a simple and easy profession to pick up.
DH does not play a lot, as a brick to say a little DH card selection ideas.
DH in fact is also quite close to the environment of the profession, also is to go fast attack or medium-speed rhythm of the idea, but in the current environment of so many mages, simple fast attack only be caught by the part of the mage, and your pre-paced single card is not as much as the number of hunters, the quality of the hunter’s offense in the face of the hunter’s easy to fall into a decadent situation, so I think the starship medium-speed system may be a more prudent choice.
DH’s Starship system got some minor enhancements in the last version, and I personally think it still has some strength. The Fragmentation Turret is extremely powerful when fired, and the Evil Power Source has a great snowballing ability. The starship system is at least more reliable than the crew system.
DH’s Taste for Chaos can be grabbed just as an overcard in the current version, and there’s a high probability of finding Time Spells and Folding Drivers inside the Evil Energy spells (which are perfect with Starships), which can help DH compress his library well enough to get over to the relevant Starship components.
My understanding of DH is to choose more starships, with some cards, control the early field, in the middle of the force, so that is and mage is a battle.DH is actually quite fit the environment of the profession, also go fast attack or medium speed rhythm of the idea, but in the current environment of so many mages, simple fast attack only be caught by the part of the mage, and your pre-post tempo card is not as much as the number of hunters, quality is also easy to face the Hunter attack into the decline. Quality is good, facing the Hunter’s offense is also easy to fall into a decline, therefore, I think the starship medium speed system may be a more stable choice.
Cosmic and dragon system of a large number of environment, so that the form of druid actually become more single, my advice to druid or more grab some double choice, and then rely on the drum circle wave of outbreaks to crush the opposite side of the bar, this is the most simple and efficient means of druid winning, after all, the environment of druid’s good goods is really not more than one.
This is the end of the analysis of the profession. The rest of the profession, such as warriors, I do not like to play; priests, warlocks and thieves belong to the type that can not control the field is easy to be fast-attack suppression of the type, I did not choose, as for the knight, the guardian’s power is still not unblocked, the ability to return to the field is still a lack of, or a pure dummy than the profession, it is easy to be overturned.