Interview with Kripparrian: Experiencing the Arena

Author: Nayn

This Thursday, coming as a pleasant surprise to everyone, Blizzard released the full pool of cards from the upcoming expansion into the Arena. If you log in before December 8th, when the Goblins vs. Gnomes cards will be released into Constructed mode, you will be given a free Arena ticket so that you can experience these fun new cards for yourself. I’ve had a ton of wacky games in these past few days, so I definitely recommend that you check it out!

I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Kripp, one of the premier Hearthstone streamers and youtubers. Kripp is well known for being a great Arena player; he is great at evaluating cards, and I try to tune into his stream when I can. We discussed everything from choosing your Hero to trying the crazy new cards. I could tell that Kripp was very excited about the upcoming changes, and I hope that you all can learn a lot from what he has to say.

I asked Kripp a series of questions, which are in bold. His responses are written below in italics.

So which Heroes would you rate the most highly?

Well, Mage still holds its spot as the top-tier class. However, I think that the power gap between Mage and the rest of the classes has gotten narrower. Mage has always been so good because of its overpowered Basic cards, like Flamestrike, Fireball, Water Elemental, and Frostbolt. Since the Basic cards are mixed with the Common cards in the draft, there will be a lot more options to choose from, so you will be getting a lot less of those overpowered cards. However, the new cards for Mage are incredibly good, (although not as great as the basics) so the class is still at the top.

I haven’t played Warlock enough yet to say for sure, but it feels really strong so far. I actually just made a video about the Floating Watcher, which gains stats when you take damage. Something that can really affect a deck’s strength in arena is the quality of it’s individual cards, but now I think that this impacts Warlock a lot less with all the great new cards they’re getting. One of the problems with Warlock in the past was that you couldn’t draft too many big cards or they’d just be dead in your hand; most decks were pushed towards the Zoo archetype. But these new cards like Floating Watcher are more “transitional” type cards, so you don’t have to spend a lot at once.

Priest is also feeling like a great class right now. Late-game Priests really beat up all the control mages past 7 wins, but the problem is that they could never really reach more than 4-5 wins. Now a lot of these new cards like Shrinkmeister and Velen’s Blessing will let you keep your creatures alive and really make it up to that point where you will face all the mages.

 

Which Heroes are the weakest? Should you avoid them, or can you still do well?

Hunter and Warrior are two classes that aren’t so great right now. If you can draft a good deck, you will faceroll everyone and easily go 12-0. The problem has been that it’s very hard to draft the right deck with those classes unless you’re super lucky. However, this could have changed with the new cards. We’ll just have to see. Anyway, if you just want to win, stick with the better classes. Don’t pick Warrior instead of Mage.

What do you pay the most attention to while drafting?

There are some cards that are just really good, like Tinkertown Technician, and sometimes you just have to pick those, and then you can start picking suboptimal cards. In the first half of the picks, you basically just pick all of the strongest cards. But in the second half of the draft, you have to start paying attention to the curve and small combos. It’s also important to know what your deck is weak to. You can have a Rogue deck with good, synergistic cards, but it can still be bad. Maybe you didn’t pick up any Assassinates, and now you lose to big cards like Ironbark Protector. You would also need heals, or your hero power would become useless if you’re a control deck, since you just take too much damage and die.

What are the most common drafting mistakes made by less experienced players?

I think some people just pick the individual best cards and ignore curve. People just look at tier lists, which usually rate expensive cards poorly, and they just pick a lot of Yetis and 2-drops. Then, when you play against a control Mage, you can’t rush them down fast enough, and everything dies to Flamestrike. From there the game is pretty much over. You have to know which cards are good to pick, but in the end you also need to know what it takes to beat the best decks.

I also think that people don’t draft enough late-game. Think about the Force-Tank MAX. I originally rated this terribly, because it’s just kind of a worse War Golem. But the reality is that it’s not: even if it’s a worse card than War Golem, it’s also bigger than War Golem. So for example if you’re playing against a Priest, and he plays War Golem, and you play Force-Tank MAX, you annihilate him. But then you just have some guy who makes an Arena tier list, with Force-Tank MAX at the bottom, and people just follow the list and then don’t understand why they lost three Yetis to Force-Tank MAX. I think that while tier lists are good for helping newer players understand which cards are powerful, that’s not the whole picture.

Which cards do you play around the most?

I play around Mind Control Tech a lot. I’m a bit traumatized by that card, and I feel that usually if you’re ahead, you don’t need more than three minions to control the board, so I kind of play around that by never having exactly four. People think I play strangely sometimes; I just don’t play a minion and float some mana. Then next turn, when I pump to five minions, they’re like “I thought he was playing around MC Tech.”

There’s a lot of general stuff to play around, mostly area of effect spells like Flamestrike or Consecration. I play aggressively against Mind Control; if I’m ahead, I just won’t play a minion that I couldn’t kill immediately if it got Mind Controlled.

Do you think value (control) decks or tempo (rush) decks do better?

My opinion is based on what I mostly face when I’m past 7 wins, and that’s slow Mage decks. I feel like those slow Mage decks are often good enough to beat most other control decks, and they destroy rush decks. Rush decks seem pretty good to a constructed player because they have like a 65% win rate against everything by just going face and not playing around anything. But in Arena, that’s not actually that good, since it’s only like four wins. So those decks just kind of get filtered out.

I like to play the control game. I think it’s better to play control, especially if you know the game, and I think that’s the kind of deck that you see past 7 wins. Aggro decks are still there, but just in much smaller numbers. I mean if I see a Hunter at 11 wins, it’s very scary. You know he has Undertaker and tons of deathrattles, you’ll see Animal Companion on turn 3, you have to play around Unleash and save your Ooze for his weapons, etc. But you just have to get lucky in drafting to take a rush deck all the way.

Which cards are underrated and overrated?

Even though Dark Iron Dwarf is rated as one of the best, I still think it is underrated. People say that it’s like the tenth best… I think it is the best, at least before GvG. People say to pick Yeti over Dark Iron, but I usually pick the Dark Iron every time. It’s only weaker to Truesilver Champion and Death’s Bite.

I think that all the 2-drops are overrated, especially ones like Knife Juggler. I mean occasionally it wins you a game, but nine times out of ten it just dies to Bloodfen Raptor or two Hero Powers. It makes people get really greedy trying to protect it, and they just make suboptimal plays.

Which new cards seem the strongest so far?

I think the Piloted Shredder, Piloted Sky Golem, and Sneed’s Old Shredder are insanely good. Think about the Shredder. First of all, as a deathrattle, it is extremely resistant to board clears. It’s good enough early game, but late game is really where it shines. I mean when people are playing Boulderfists, suddenly your 4-drop is trading with a Boulderfist, because what spawns afterwards finishes it off.

The only card that I upgraded from Terrible to Good is Force-Tank MAX, since it’s the biggest neutral creature. Compare it to Boulderfist. If a Priest has Boulderfist, and you’re also playing a Priest, your Force-Tank on an empty board kills three Boulderfists. That’s insane. And because you’re playing the slow control game, it doesn’t really matter that you’re playing two more mana. So that card is surprisingly good.

Like I said before, the Floating Watcher is ridiculous. I actually just made a video about this, and I’ll upload it soon. Basically you’re developing the board at the same time that you’re getting card advantage. Before, you would spend two mana on Hero Power to invest in a later turn, but with the Floating Watcher, your two mana is still doing that, but it’s also essentially using Mark of the Wild on a creature. So you’re keeping up with the board while you’re developing late game, and that’s ridiculously powerful.

I also think Light of the Naaru is a really good card. It is such a versatile card. You can combo it with Auchenai, and you will always summon the Lightwarden, even if the minion dies. I think it will be seen in Constructed too; right now people are running the Silence spell mainly because it’s another way to trigger Wild Pyro. I think this will replace Silence for that purpose. So you can Northshire Cleric, Wild Pyro, then use Light of the Naaru. After that you can use Circle of Healing to draw a ton of cards and give your Lightwarden a ton of attack.

What’s your personal favorite of the new cards?

Explosive Sheep is pretty awesome. You can use it as a 2-drop, because it just clears anything that they play. You can use it as a clear later on. It’s super annoying; you can’t just play more stuff and ignore it. Also, it can spawn from Piloted Shredder. So sometimes if people play their cards before they attack, and suddenly there’s an Explosive Sheep, they don’t know what to do.

 

How do you feel about the randomness of Arena, especially with these new cards?

I usually get frustrated when I lose because of luck, especially when I play around stuff. So for example, I would play a little bit into Flamestrike to bait it out, so that if I got Flamestriked I would still be ahead. And then they don’t have Flamestrike, and I’m like “oh, I win” and play my entire hand that would kill them next turn. And then they topdeck Flamestrike. That seems to happen an unnatural amount of times, and it usually takes only a few of those in a day to get me upset.

Another thing is when I’m getting crushed by someone who’s making a ton of mistakes but drawing well. One of the deciding factors in a game is how the cards come. I’ve lost against people who make terrible mistakes, sometimes repeatedly, and that really feels very bad.

Are there any changes you would like to see to the Arena itself?

What I would want is for my Arena wins to count towards a golden portrait which I could then use in Arena. Why isn’t that a thing? Blizzard already makes more money from people who play Arena, because it isn’t free. And a lot of people play Arena exclusively, so they don’t really care about the cards they get as rewards. It would also be cool if you could draft golden cards if you own a golden version of that card. I’ve said these things to Blizzard, and they say “yeah, it’s awesome,” but nothing ever happens, unfortunately.

So that’s all I have to ask. In closing, do you have a word to the fans out there?

Well, if you just started Arena now to try out the new cards, and you enjoyed playing Arena… maybe you should continue that. So many people just play Ranked, and I just can’t understand that. I think a lot of people are impressionable; that is, when all the “cool cat” streamers are always playing Constructed, they want to do it too, and play their decks. You guys should really think about what you like in Hearthstone, and do that.

So that was the gist of my interview with Kripp. I sincerely hope that you could all benefit and learn from our conversation, and I hope you consider his words about focusing less on Constructed. The Arena is a very exciting game mode and there is a much larger diversity of cards than in Ranked play. As always, if you have anything to say, feel free to do so in the comments section below. So good luck, and get twelve wins!